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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29763141">The Storm Hawk and the Dragon: The Daynight</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyfyGuy2/pseuds/SyfyGuy2'>SyfyGuy2</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Storm Hawk and the Dragon [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Storm Hawks (Cartoon), The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Amnesia, Crossover, Dragon TF, Dragon transformation, Dragons, F/M, Kidnapping, Magic, Memory Loss, Memory Magic, Psychic Bond, Sequel, Worldbuilding, Years Later</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-05-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 00:08:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,978</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29763141</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyfyGuy2/pseuds/SyfyGuy2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years after the Storm Hawks entered the Far Side, Smaug is freed from imprisonment once more by a new enemy with a familiar face. And when a powerful artefact takes away Piper's memories, everything the great dragon desires is almost within his claws. But the Daynight is coming, and when the fire and winds have died down, nothing will ever be the same.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Storm Hawk and the Dragon [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2187507</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Another Day on the Condor</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello, and welcome to my new fanfiction. :) Well, it’s been (wow!) four years, but now here is the sequel to my earlier story, ‘The Storm Hawk and the Dragon’. :)<br/>Frankly, writing this it feels kinda good to be back writing Smaug in the Storm Hawks’ universe and Piper having to deal with him again, plus getting to do some more original story and worldbuilding with this one. :) For anyone who isn’t familiar with the first story, I’d recommend reading that first so that a few things here in the sequel will make sense.<br/>This story will be updated roughly every three weeks on a schedule.<br/>And I’d like to personally thank Mahou Shoujo Crystalic Katomi for beta-reading several scenes and pieces of this story. :)<br/>Now, without further ado I give you all:</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Squadron log. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Date: Ninety-four days and eight years since Operation Danny Jim’s Locker began. (Half the guys still crack up when we mention that name.) We did a background sweep far in the west quadrant looking for the foe we originally came here to find. Nothing to be found, per usual.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Not that I’m complaining! There’s still plenty of Sky Knight squadron duties that needs doing on the Far Side of Atmos – the world of Ionos.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>We’re responding to a call for help rescuing three abducted industrialists from Terra Monsunos whose kidnappers were last spotted in this specific quadrant.</em>
</p><p>Sand-coloured clouds pressed thick over every large formation in the skies, rendering them little more than half-ghostly silhouettes. Beyond the sweltering haze, a terra was in view up ahead, surrounded by clouds – the terra was a cluster of half-a-dozen gigantic lumps of mountaintop merged, as if some giant out of a bedtime story had slotted them together like a jigsaw. Lush, deep-green vegetation – thick forestry of more than one distinctive tree species – coated every couple metres of the terra, while green life dotted with multicoloured flowers coated the terra’s sides above the cloudline like algae. The sky was pale-orange and a lime-coloured aurora rippled through it in serene, glowing waves. Above the terra’s eastern side hung a black-, grey- and purple-coloured carrier, a vertical energy-beam linking it to the terra’s jungle.</p><p>The figures on the ground – avian humanoid with purple feathers, wearing identical dull-grey, baggy clothing – seemingly had no idea they were being watched. The three Kitanen were standing around three more figures who were tied and gagged together in a three-person circle. The binocular-goggles lowered from amber-orange eyes on a dark-skinned face, a couple indigo locks blowing in the wind – the eyes turned to their owner’s left. A lighter-skinned face with bright-green eyes gave a nod of his head back, before blasting his vehicle ahead.</p><p>The landing site, barely wide enough to fit half a house, was mostly shadowed save for several sunlight-droplets through the canopy. The tall lead Kitanen smirked coldly down at the prisoners, slender blue eyes icy.</p><p>“I would say I’m terribly sorry for this,” he murmured in a calm, haughty and sophisticated-sounding voice; “but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate. Watching you all shiver like mice – I could just plop you all in a cage and watch you quiver every time I go past.” He got on one knee so he was eye-level with the captives, and gestured around. “<em>Terra Conaicin</em> – it’s completely uninhabited, devoid of technology… because it’s one of the most hostile terras on this side of Ionos.” The captives quivered, and as if on cue, a hiss drew their terrified gazes. Several pairs of eyes opened in the blackness cast by the giant leaves, looking out hungrily. The leader chuckled.</p><p>“<em>One of the most</em> hostile,” he echoed meaningfully, rising. A subordinate Kitanen on his flank removed a handheld device with a crystalline crown at the end and pressed. The device emitted a high-pitched whine for just two seconds. In the following silence, the captives’ heads spun as they heard a couple new bestial vocalisations from among the jungle nearby, and more sounding further away. More and more eyes were rapidly appearing in the jungles’ shadows, varying from pairs to clusters of eyes.</p><p>“And this is where we part ways, good doctors,” the leader said with finality, stepping into his ship’s translucent energy-beam. It gradually lifted him upwards, while his subordinates entered the tractor-beam one after the other below him. The captives’ terrified gazes watched them ascending, as the jungle’s snarls grew closer and more aggravated. The leader sent a mocking salute. “When the Empire has claimed Monsunos, I shall explain your sacrifice to your families in a year’s time!”</p><p>“Don’t be so sure!” The Kitanen leader turned at the voice. He only saw a silhouette and blue-glowing lightning-blades, before the figure’s flying kick made the leader see stars. The Kitanen hit the dark-brown earth, both his subordinates underneath him. The first predator rushed forth from the foliage, a gigantic feline with lime-glowing eyes and porcupine-like crystalline spines. The captives shrieked through their gags. A silhouetted Heliscooter shot upon the jungle, downwards, shifting from air-mode to land-mode. The indigo-haired rider leapt ahead of her ride and landed in a stance, sophisticated crystal-staff’s tip instantly zapping the charging predator. Without missing a beat, the staff-wielding woman twirled sideways, a split-second before her Heliscooter coming in behind her smashed into the unprepared creature and knocked it away. She fired an energy-bolt from her staff at a pitch-plant monster emerging from the foliage. The woman’s spiky, indigo hair had an orange band in it, twin braids running down her face’s side beside one ear. In her ear were two gold earrings, and she wore a dark blue-and-orange outfit with numerous streamlined armour-plates.</p><p>While the woman held the creatures back, the Kitanen leader groaned as he came to, not registering a foot moving near him – his eyes widened when a blue lightning-blade was suddenly held to his face and neck, wide eyes looking upon his assailant. Above him stood a green-eyed human man in his early twenties, dressed in chrome armour plates of varying sizes like the woman’s, primarily red-and-blue clothing underneath. His face was firm in warning – he had spiky, thick locks of bright-red hair atop his head, but the sides had received a buzzcut shave, two gold earrings in his right ear. He had a very short and handsome beard.</p><p>“Storm Hawks!” the Kitanen leader gasped. A lackey Kitanen whipped out and fired a crystal-blaster. Aerrow had seen him moving already and deflected the blast with his lightning-blade. The energy-bolt exploded at the Kitanen’s feet and threw him backwards, out cold. Seeing his opening, the leader performed a sweeping kick which brought Aerrow’s legs out from under him, then he scrabbled across the small area while his two soldiers were picking themselves up. He leapt into and immediately began ascending his ship’s tractor beam, all fear disappearing from him. The remaining two Kitanen drew identical energy-batons that flared with purple crystal-energy. Aerrow responded to their ugly scowls with a big-eyed smirk, then he launched forward with a cry. Criss-crossing his lightning-blades, he blocked one Kitanen’s energy-baton and pushed him away, then he blocked a strike for his head with one blade, trading blocks and blows. Above everyone’s heads, the Kitanen leader was levitating away from the jungle-terra, although he scowled at the slow process.</p><p>Piper grunted furiously as she twisted and whirled her crystal-staff to keep the oncoming predators back, the number of visible shapes in the foliage rapidly increasing. She’d dealt with many ferocious creatures in her years on Ionos, but this terra was entirely wilderness for a reason, and she knew she and Aerrow would be overwhelmed soon. A crystalline-jawed gorilla-beast swung a huge fist – Piper’s staff took the blow but the resulting energy-blast forced her backwards. Now her crystal-staff was split in half, either hand holding a piece as she stared. Piper turned her half-defiant smirk on the beast, entering a defensive stance. Said beast was advancing on her, roaring. It pounced – Piper’s hand was behind her back.</p><p>“<em>Clock’s Stop</em>!” she yelled, bringing two crystals together. Two bright-red flashes exploded outward from Piper and Aerrow. The attacking wildlife suddenly stopped, as did the two slashing Kitanen. <em>Almost stopped</em>, still moving in extreme slow-motion like a film playing at one-percent its normal speed. An unperturbed Aerrow, glowing slightly red, looked wide-eyed at his near-frozen adversaries. Piper spun, checking everything was frozen. Aerrow grinned as he raised an arm and lightly flicked a slo-mo Kitanen’s face – the Kitanen’s trajectory reversed at breakneck speed, eyes’ lids beginning to close. Piper was rooting in her pouch full of multicoloured crystals, quickly.</p><p>“I know I’ve got the right crystal in here somewhere…” she murmured, eyebrows serious. “Where is it?”</p><p>In what seemed like no time at all, time around the charging beasts returned to normal flow. But things in front of them were not as they’d been a second ago. Piper now held two-handed what looked like a crystalline flower spouting a pink-glowing stone-bud – she smirked, then she closed her eyes and meditatively concentrated, making the flower-crystal sing a high-pitched tune. A cat-predator’s lipless jaws snapped half-a-metre short of Piper’s hands. The chaos came to a momentary standstill. The cat took a sniff, and after a brief pause, it turned and stalked back into the forest. The other predators were withdrawing peacefully. In a few moments, Piper let the crystal’s song die down and opened her eyes. She shot Aerrow a grin, which he returned. The tied-up abductees nearby sagged in relief.</p><p>Dozens of metres above the terra, the Kitanen leader scowled deeply at the results below. He drew his energy-pistol, aiming to try and kill for the Home Terra. All his current thoughts disappeared when his pistol was blasted clean from his hand, making him look up.</p><p>“Not so fast, Mop Drekken!” exclaimed the blonde one of two Skimmer-riders who flew forward and hovered, weapons trained on the leader.</p><p>“Um… I thought Mop Drekken was from the Dark Star,” murmured the other Skimmer’s brawny rider, and his partner rolled his blue eyes. Finn hadn’t changed much in the years since the Storm Hawks had arrived on the Far Side, apart from a taller and lanker build, and new patchwork-clothing and armour-plates. He had a two-inch beard, and a moustache that was short in width but cleanly-cut and thick enough to half-cover his mouth. Junko by comparison had undergone quite the growth spurt since the days when he’d been closer to humans’ size – his large shoulders and torso combined with his deepened voice made him seem to anyone who didn’t know wallops like he must’ve been a bodybuilder among his kind. His grey hair had grown out messily.</p><p>Minutes later, Piper and Aerrow’s sky-rides were flying away from the jungle-terra, while Finn and Junko’s rides kept guard on the Kitanen carrier.</p>
<hr/><p>Dropping the Kitanen off at a prison terra was a quick pit-stop, before the Storm Hawks brought the kidnapped industrials back home. Terra Monsunos consisted of several peaks with mainly sloping and flat land inbetween, but the sky above was broiling with dark stormclouds which emptied torrents of rainwater. A constant feature of the terra as it was located in a permanent storm system, although the terra’s forcefield-dome (a feature protecting several of Ionos’ terras) limited how much rainwater reached it. At its current setting, the terra’s forcefield was letting through enough of the downpour to form a drizzle.</p><p>“Maybe you should avoid taking documents on Terra Monsunos’ latest weather-modifying tech with you next time you get air-turkey,” Aerrow gently advised the freed hostages on the <em>Condor</em>’s Skimmer ramp in a gentle. Piper was with him, seeing the three off.</p><p>“Yes, uh, we will,” murmured the lead former-hostage, ducking his head shamefully, though he sounded earnest. “Thank you for saving us, Storm Hawks.” The three ex-hostages bowed their heads and put their fists in the opposite hands’ palms. Aerrow and Piper mirrored the gesture – it was a farewell in some parts of Ionos. The ex-hostages turned heel and began walking away, towards the small town of cobblestone streets and flame-themed houses, settlements visible dotted around the terra’s slopes and peaks.</p><p>On the <em>Condor</em>’s bridge, the Merb helmsman’s back faced his fellow Storm Hawks as he wiped the Time Pulse beacon’s glass. Finn and Junko were sat at the semicircular couches surrounding the bridge’s table. Junko was completely engaged in his portable games console, while Finn looked completely bored as he strung a crystal-studded, string-less yo-yo which levitated up and down in tune to his hand’s gestures, tossing a handful of popcorn into his mouth.</p><p>“I still don’t get why we didn’t just turn those Kitanen over to Monsunos,” Finn murmured. He tossed a piece of popcorn, but a hand caught it lightning-fast short of his mouth.</p><p>“Because they’re still politically iffy about taking Kitanen prisoner since we defeated their empire,” Starling murmured – Radarr was perched on her shoulder. She promptly tossed the stolen popcorn-piece into her mouth. Starling’s appearance hadn’t changed much in eight years, save that her ponytail above the base of her neck had grown a few inches longer. Her new outfit had smaller, more numerous and more streamlined armour-plates and more padding like the rest of the squadron, and she retained the indigo pants colour whilst her top consisted of olive and dark-blue patchwork. Radarr’s once-lilac fur was now lightly tan with age, and he had a blue-and-red clothpiece. Turning his head, Radarr promptly pounced off of Starling to see to something.</p><p>“You’re back from dropping them off already?” Junko murmured at Starling, the gruff-voiced wallop surprised, no-one taking notice of the chicken snatching pieces from Finn’s popcorn-bowl. Suddenly, and so dramatically that the light levels in the bridge could have darkened, Stork whirled around almost like a blood hound hearing a dog’s-whistle.</p><p>“Ohhh, yeah…” he murmured darkly. “Which means, if you’re really Starling, you know the drill!” He pointed a green finger, elongated face twisting. Starling rolled her hazel-green eyes but smirked slightly. It seemed almost-immediately that Stork was setting up curtains and panels on all her sides, then standing in front with a camera and joystick.</p><p>
  <em>FLASH. FLASH. FLASH.</em>
</p><p>For the first body-scanning image, Starling struck a confident pose with a small smile and hand on one hip. In the second image, her side faced the camera and she gave the lens a daring look as she held up her crystal-nunchuks. In the third image, which showed her bones and organs with her blue outline encasing them, she’d raised one hand’s index and middle fingers to the camera.</p><p>Once the last image was taken, Stork was watching a handheld, part-crystalline device as it beeped.</p><p>“No sign of parasites, no shapeshifting…” Stork sharply all but threw the device away. “She’s A-OK!” Stork hadn’t forgone the emo style of his slick, black hair since his earlier years, but he had shaved one side, and he’d taken to wearing a single silver earring – a gift said to keep evil entities away. His clothing now had more prominent dark-blues in balance with the browns, and smaller armour plates including a more streamlined X-shaped breastplate; though Stork’s plates were all a darker cobalt colour compared to his squad-mates’. Starling rolled her eyes slightly but smiled fondly. The door to the bridge slid open, and Aerrow and Piper entered.</p><p>“And now that we don’t have anything on, we’ve got two options for downtime,” Aerrow said, bringing one hand into the other fist as he grinned.</p><p>“I’m guessing… <em>keep-away</em>?” Starling murmured, leaning casually on the back of the sofa. She promptly tossed the satchel she had with her to Aerrow. He opened its top, looking at the glowing pale-blue crystals inside, and he and Piper grinned.</p><p>“Perfect,” Piper said.</p>
<hr/><p>The vault’s domed ceiling was decorated with real-seeming, flickering constellations of stars, each cluster uniquely-shaped and set against a different-coloured sky. Sixty feet below the dome, the walls were ornate and intricately-carved with vine-like gold serpents curving around pillars and columns, archways marking points where the central chamber ended and hallways making up the rest of the vault began. A guard patrolled in a slow, square-shaped looping path around the vault’s central artefact, which was one among many artefacts displayed on tables and cases. The guard was a huge and burly figure with skin like rock, armour-plating of yellow-glowing crystal protecting his torso and wristbands (one wristband larger and more intricate-looking than the other) and connected by crystal-vines. On his head was a beret made of metal, looking slightly off atop his stalagmite-shaped head though it was in fact positioned perfectly.</p><p>
  <em>Tink.</em>
</p><p>The guard snapped his underbite-jawed head, red-and-green eyes alert. He saw no activity in the noise’s direction, no movement, no sign of anyone in the shadowed area of the vault where patches of darkness obscured details inbetween the desks and displays. The guard looked left and right down either crosswise side of the vault. He saw the two other guards who were on post tonight, at either far end of a hallway, going about their rounds. Hesitating momentarily, the rock guard slowly stepped towards the shadowed area. Going in, he raised an arm that had the more decorative of his two crystal-wristbands, and from the technology a transparent serpent-body with a giant head sprung, flaring nostrils sniffing. The crystal-energy head chirped softly, telling the guard it had found something. Pressing on, the guard didn’t notice a slim, dark silhouette swiftly and silently tackling one of the other guards’ silhouettes.</p><p>The guard was slowly, carefully approaching a dark corner behind a desk, conjuring a crystal-blade from his free arm’s smaller band. As he got close, he spotted the circular stone on the floor, out of place. Red-eyed face puzzled, the guard carefully moved down, energy-beast retracting into his armband as he reached for the rock. He turned it over and saw eligible text etched into its smooth underside.</p><p>He quietly read in his gravelly voice, “’<em>I’m behind you</em>’…?”</p><p>No sooner had those words left his mouth than a black shape leaned bat-like upside-down behind him.</p><p>
  <em>KZZZT.</em>
</p><p>The guard grunted in pain as sparks crackled to the floor from somewhere on his back.</p><p>The hall’s remaining guard spun at the noise. He saw his fellow guard falling down thirty metres away, a cloaked silhouette standing over him but promptly disappearing with catlike speed. The last guard grunted and eyes widened as he conjured his crystal-blade, immediately looking around. In a flash of movement, the figure caught him by surprise on his flank. With a sound of rock crunching, it was over.</p><p>Silent as the dead, the cloaked figure’s hooded head lifted, looking across the vault. A ruby-coloured crystal stood on display under the domed ceiling. One minute the crystal was there, then a shadow slunk along its display, and it was gone.</p>
<hr/><p>Far across Ionos, it was barely yet dusk.</p><p>“<em>Who-hoo-hoo! YEAH</em>!” Finn hollered, holding the star-shaped crystal up one-handed as his Skimmer shot fast through a bank of pink clouds. The skies in Ionos varied in colour and appearance in practically every area – here the sky was deep-purple, a golden-yellow aurora rippling through it. Junko’s Skimmer came shooting fast towards Finn from the opposite direction, beefy hand outstretched. The sharpshooter promptly rolled his Skimmer three-hundred-and-sixty degrees to dodge. Finn didn’t see Piper’s Heliscooter fly from the pink cloud-bank in his left, the crystal-mage throwing a handful of crystals. The stones exploded in light-flashes on Finn’s Skimmer – with a hiss like metal, the whole machine turned a vapour-hissing pale-blue as it was frosted over, engines rapidly dying.</p><p>“Aw, man,” Finn groaned as his ride began to dip. In the split-second Piper’s outstretched arm shot above him, Finn made his dropping ride protectively roll again. “Too slow!” Piper pulled a slight unimpressed face. Grinning, Finn held up a bright-orange crystal and tossed it in his Skimmer’s engine slot. The air seemed to growl around the Skimmer, clouds darkening. The ride went from frost-blue to hot-orange, before volcanic jets of flame erupted from the engines. Finn screamed – not reaching a shrill pitch like in his adolescent years but still very drawn-out – as his ride shot forward so fast his neck almost could’ve stretched behind him. The Skimmer twisted about like a crazed, living bullet; curving, glowing fiery lines were rapidly extending from it to form a transparent body of energy. Within seconds, a transparent, serpent-bodied beast with feathered wings and a fanged, armadillo-like head had formed under Finn’s sky-ride, shrieking. Gasping in awe, Finn almost didn’t notice when someone flew upside-down above him and snatched the star-crystal. The crystal in hand, Starling grinned on her own Skimmer. Finn cried out as he tried getting a hold of his Skimmer’s hologram-beast, with little success. Despite her grin, Starling was by no means distracted, swerving her Skimmer away when Junko flew up by beside her to try grabbing the crystal.</p><p>“You know, I think they’re finding this a bit too easy,” Aerrow murmured with arms crossed, he and Radarr watching the other Storm Hawks’ game from their stationary hovering Skimmer. Finn’s fiery hologram-beast made a V-shape as he seemed to get it to launch at the fray. Aerrow put two fingers to his comms’ earpiece and grinned. “Piper, we’re taking it up to Level Ten.” With a thrust, Aerrow’s Skimmer shot diagonally to the nearby game, rolling a couple times, before he dived like a swimmer towards the pink clouds. Elsewhere, Piper grinned mischievously before she shot her Heliscooter straight into a cloud-bank. Finn’s transparent crystal-beast mount reared vertically up beside Starling’s ride.</p><p>“Huh?” Something in both Storm Hawks’ peripheral senses cried out and made them turn their heads. They thought they’d seen and heard something subtle inside a nearby cloud-bank. They heard the rustle of large-sounding wings – a second-and-a-half before the huge dragon shot from the clouds with a snarl, like an arrow firing upwards. The silver-chested, red-scaled dragon spread its vast, leathery wings to slow, dramatically suspended in the sky – it easily dwarfed the sky-rides by far, bright-green reptilian eyes upon them, decorative crest of head-spurs identifying the drake as a male. Finn’s energy-mount whined keenly, its glowing eyes saucer-wide in fright – Finn was likewise mesmerised, as even after eight years around them, Piper and Aerrow’s dragon-forms still inspired a sense of awe verging on fear.</p><p>“Aw, man!” Finn groaned with the tone of a player at a disadvantage, before he took his Skimmer and energy-beast shooting away, grabbing the star-crystal from Starling as he passed. Finn was unprepared when a second, indigo-and-bronze dragon with a somewhat thinner torso shot from the cloud-bank he’d been heading towards, the sudden updraft of its passage blasting him – the energy-beast squealed and disintegrated. The star-crystal was knocked from Finn’s hand, falling to the clouds. “Aww!”</p><p>Before the crystal had fallen more than ten metres, the male dragon suddenly shot upon it like some huge bird of prey, hind-claws rearing and one claw seizing it. The male didn’t see the female dragon shooting by directly under him, her hind-paw snatching his prize before flying ahead. Piper in her dragon form flew fast yet easily ahead, a savage-looking grin across her crocodilian face. Flying crosswise underneath her underside, Junko activated his knuckle-busters and snatched the loosely-held star crystal from between her talons, chortling as he shot away. The wallop’s chortle was cut off as a blur of red and silver shot over, spinning and disorienting his Skimmer – when it was gone after a second-and-a-half, the wallop gave a confused whine at finding his hand held no crystal. Dragon-Aerrow shot to the pink clouds, rapidly fading to a silhouette and then vanishing.</p><p>With a pump of his wings, Aerrow shot above the uppermost clouds with a snarl. Here, there was no cloud above, only below, leaving the aurora-decorated sky crystal-clear above his spiky back. Aerrow’s serpentine, sinuous neck twisted to crane his reptilian head left and right, serrated teeth slightly showing between parted lips with his grin, green eyes expectant. He didn’t look behind himself as a matter of leagues away, a dragon that was almost camouflaged by the purple sky silently dipped above the clouds, then back in, soundlessly. A few seconds passed. Dragon-Aerrow’s senses told him where she was closing in, before dragon-Piper suddenly burst out of the cloudline and half-brushed, half-collided with him; he flew higher with her as they locked hind-paws, grappling over the star-crystal, their bat-like wings opened around them to hold them in the air as they twirled. Despite their clash of hind-paws, neither twirling dragon struck at the other with their serpentine heads’ teeth or their wings’ taloned hands; instead growling, hissing noises of laughter erupted from their jaws. Piper gently broke off from Aerrow, wings thrusting as she flew fast ahead with her spine pointed near-straight, star-crystal in her hind-paw. Both the two Storm Hawks’ dragon-forms had changed with their human forms somewhat since their first transformations eight years ago, when they’d gained mastery of the Binding and what they’d dubbed Piper’s Smaug-bond. The spines and spikes along their backs and necks had grown out more and become more decorative, the blades on the ends of their whip-like tails were now quite sharp. The crest of spiky spurs on their heads had grown out, though Piper’s remained shorter and less decorative than Aerrow’s, a dimorphic trait of their dragon-breed. Aerrow’s face had developed a more rectangular skull structure with a ‘beard’ of short spikes along his jawline, while Piper’s snout had developed a more slender shape with smaller nostrils. They’d also both grown significantly in size – now they were roughly three-quarters the size of a carrier like the <em>Condor</em>.</p><p>As dragon-Piper flew on, a serrated-toothed grin was on Aerrow’s face, though its benevolence was clear from his relaxed brow-ridges, before he pumped his wings hard to lift himself diagonally higher in the air, then dived to gain velocity and levelled into a beeline headed straight for Pipe. Piper meanwhile was headed for a large, barren terra that loomed above the highest cloudline.</p><p>Twenty minutes later, two dragons with near-opposing colours were lying like lazing lizards upon the barren dwarf-terra, reptilian heads’ chins resting atop one or both of their wing-limbs’ long-fingered hands, the aurora casting a faint golden glow. Though the air this high up was slightly thinner than what most mortals were used to, the change was only a discomfort for dragons – Piper and Aerrow had once observed they could fly as high as the stratosphere’s lower-edge before the air got too thin for them to bare. Slit-pupil eyes, glowing green and molten-amber respectively, were looking admiringly out at the aurora that cast faint light and shadows along their glittering scales.</p><p>“It’s beautiful,” Aerrow noted, his voice reverberating slightly in his current form.</p><p>“Yeah,” Piper agreed with a smile, the dragoness’s voice also reverberating but possessing more of a hissing quality than her male counterpart.</p><p>“It kinda reminds me of that time we were around Terra Trongtrodanam…”</p><p>“When we dated?” Piper asked smoothly, lifting her head slightly as she glanced at Aerrow.</p><p>“Yeah…” Aerrow murmured, and Piper caught his hint of lament – the way his slit-pupil eyes lowered and his tone shifted so-very-slightly were indicator enough. Piper and Aerrow had dated for nearly two years, but they’d decided to end the relationship on good terms. She could feel Aerrow’s feelings this close – a part of sharing the Binding with another was that they had to regularly keep their emotions in-sync to ensure the connection remained two-way, and that aspect apparently hadn’t changed when the Binding and Piper’s Smaug-bond in her soul had been forever altered eight years ago.</p><p>They rested in each-other’s company like that for close to an hour.</p>
<hr/><p>An elevated dais stood in the centre of the carved-out cavern chamber which three tunnels linked into, crystals with varying colours glowing at different points atop it. The figure was silent as it approached the dais with a quick but even pace, pitch-black cloak swishing slightly with the movements of the cloak-concealed body. The dark figure knelt in the central space between two of the dais’ crystal-holding extensions – while the figure’s metal-plated knees were bent, its leathery-purple gloved hands held the ruby crystal reverently like a true crystal-mage. The figure lifted the crystal towards its hood – all that could be seen inside the shadow-filled hood was a cybernetic brace-like piece which seemed moulded to cover the figure’s jawline and lower-jaw.</p><p>“<em>This must work</em>…” whispered the figure in an electronic, scrambled-sounding voice with no determinate gender. Small lights on the brace-piece flashed as each syllable was uttered. The kneeling figure moved the crystal towards the space above the dais – the dilating-door seal in the dais’ two-metre-wide central plate slid open, a vertically-aligned mechanical claw extending out and opening its fingers. The figure slotted the ruby crystal into those fingers, and instantly the crystal began to spit reddish-white lightning. The machine’s other crystals hummed and glowed brighter, while the figure calmly stepped backward, thick-soled boots briefly visible. The figure outstretched either arm, making the cloak spread like a human kite, electronic voice chanting a tongue which few short of scholars understood. Arcs of lightning crackled between the machine’s various components, hum increasing. Then an explosion of light and hissing erupted in the chamber, though the figure was barely perturbed, raising an arm to shield their hooded head. The light died, leaving a translucent, chrome, almost ghostly cloud hovering above the dais. As the figure looked into the cloud, it abruptly shifted, split and coalesced; forming a vague, smoky image of a serpentine red dragon with a long tail flapping its wings, discarded wisps of the cloud twirling around it. Well, the smoke-dragon was almost red, save for two yellow pinpricks on its arrow-shaped head.</p><p>“<em>It’s almost time</em>…”</p>
<hr/><p>Only the vaguest dreams came amid the oblivion. They started out faint, struggling to get through, and it immediately induced a concerned sense of worry in him, only now remembering that he had a brain as other memories slowly came back. The faint, blurring images and echoes began gaining clarity.</p><p>
  <em>Her.</em>
</p><p>He was hearing her voice, he could make out and vaguely recall her beehive of spiky indigo hair, Haradrim-like dark skin, and her amber-orange eyes. He longed for her as he longed for any precious things that were his by claim. The faintest impressions that were not quite images came – daydreams of how he would chain and punish her for how she had <em>wronged him</em> from within the sanctity that was his home, how he would make sure she learned precisely what he did to traitors whom he wouldn’t even grant death to, how she would watch the thieves die…</p><p>
  <em>The thieves. THIEVES. </em>
</p><p>Another image came, little more than a silhouette at first, but then a streak of red hair formed atop the head, lighter skin and bright-green eyes materialising. Now <em>hatred</em> flared like a furnace’s flame in his core. Pure desire to torture, to annihilate, to bring to an end as a broken, deformed shell in <em>fire. Fire!</em></p><p>More, bit by bit, was coming back. He remembered the details and anatomy of his body one bit at a time. He remembered what he was, what he hailed from. He remembered the meanings attached to more words. He remembered the details of <em>her</em> crimes that had made him so angry, he remembered why he hated that filthy red-haired boy so much. More and more of his life and vast wealth of knowledge came back, before with what the Common Tongue would describe as a <em>snap</em>, he was complete. In front of his awareness, there was pure darkness.</p><p>“<em>The humblest greetings of a hardly worthy mortal, o great dragon of old.</em>”</p><p>Smaug’s growl reverberated in the non-place as he immediately drew up his mental guards, and as if triggered by a flexing muscle, Smaug began gaining form. A large eye materialised, lidded and surrounded by blood-coloured reptilian scales, and the lids opened to reveal a brilliant, yellow and orange-flecked orb, in which was set an intricate-edged, black slit-pupil. His mind went once more back over his last memories: heading straight to the Forbidden City in response to Piper’s summons, his attempt to take her, the filthy Sky Knight Aerrow evading his every attempt to scorch him, then the familiar magic that had suddenly invaded Smaug and forcibly dragged his consciousness into oblivion. Smaug felt the realisation of what had happened and the urge to rip, tear, destroy. How it burned his pride and utterly infuriated him! He gave his rage a little voice, directing earthquake-like psychic ripples at the alien presence which would turn any mortal ice-cold.</p><p>“<em>Who. </em>Are. Youuuu<em>…?</em>” Smaug hummed out the words slowly and huskily in his deep, dark and reverberating voice. Then he said more forcefully, with much more deliberate clarity and a threat if he wasn’t satisfied: “<em>Who are you that </em>speaks to me now?” A pause before the voice responded.</p><p>“<em>I am no-one of relevance to your immediate thoughts, Great Serpent of Fire</em>,” the voice murmured. Smaug had the urge to curl his lip and growl, seeing right through the thinly-veiled twist of words. But more than that, Smaug brooded and tried to calculate whom this new voice could be. The voice was without gender, and in all likelihood disguised by magic to mask its true sound – Smaug quickly ruled out Piper and Cyclonis as likely suspects, and he was made more on-guard by how the intruder seemed to know how to speak to a dragon unlike virtually anyone Smaug had met in Atmos before. “<em>I possess the means to aid you in a certain manner, and I beg you –</em> use<em> me</em>.” Smaug summoned his rumbling growl like the sound of a distant earthquake. But he also contemplated in a guarded manner.</p><p>“<em>Just a</em> Good Samaritan,” Smaug purred lowly and darkly, his tone making his distrust quite clear; “<em>who decided to help old</em> me?” He snarled the last word in dangerous warning. “<em>Let’s overlook the humilities. Tell me: why is it that you are speaking to me </em>now?” A silent pause followed – the alien presence didn’t leave, but Smaug was ready to act to stop them without wounding his own pride the moment it looked like they might depart. From the way the intruder took their long time to reply, Smaug could rule they were either a brilliant chess-master or just not quite as smart as they believed they were.</p><p>“<em>I seek death</em>,” the intruder murmured.</p><p>“<em>A little too vague</em>,” Smaug hummed deeply.<em> “Care to </em>elaborate a bit?”</p><p>“<em>I seek </em>deaths<em>. A large number of deaths. And I know that in that respect, our goals align, Great Smaug the Terrible</em>.” Smaug said nothing. “<em>It is no secret that you wish death and fire upon those you encounter. I wish to see you restored, Great Dragon, so that the one goal which directly aligns with mine may be fulfilled by you. You have my word, I do not intend to interfere in any of your other affairs and pursuits – all I want is enough death to sate my own hunger. But I cannot do what I wish to without </em>the grace of your permission<em>.</em></p><p>“<em>With your consent, I will release you of your enemies’ undignified craft, and hopefully our interests will not clash beyond that.</em>” Smaug grumbled a breathy, tremor-like growl, muscles flexing and tightening around the eye as he glared and thought suspiciously. This seemed too good…</p><p>“<em>And to prove that I might be a trustworthy ally, I will tell you how to find </em>her.” The fire-coloured eye widened, and multiple emotions stirred and danced around Smaug’s black heart.</p><p>“<em>Everyone on Atmos thinks you no longer a threat, but all the same they know of the one girl you seek.</em>” It seemed like the figure was trying to make Smaug think his knowledge no more cause for concern than if any filthy lowlife mortal had randomly spouted it under certain circumstances, and irritating Smaug further was that he couldn’t quite detect hint of truth or lie in his current state. “<em>I must inform you that she is no longer on Atmos – she has gone beyond, to the Far Side of the Atmos. To Ionos. I will set you free… and I will tell you the way to follow her.</em>”</p><p><em>That</em> got Smaug thinking anew, the cogs turning and whirring with inhumanly-fast speed in his great mind.</p><p>“Hmmm… Alright.” Smaug purred calmly and darkly. “<em>But </em>first<em> you will tell me how to find her. And then you will release me – </em>promptly.” It seemed a little too good, and Smaug knew he needed some advantage. “<em>Now… shall we begin</em>?”</p>
<hr/><p>The subterranean cavern was a dim, dark place, lit only by a single bright sunbeam that filtered diagonally in. It was the sort of underground that dwarves of an ancient time would have felt right at home in once they’d carved it out with their architecture and stone homes – a feat that a much more recent but still-ancient people had already done, though their old city taking up one side of the cavern was now little more than rubble and a few half-standing structures. One thing that would have deterred dwarves, as it had inspired awe-eclipsing terror in all that had come here to see it in the recent years, lurked in shadow with the time of day at the other side of the cavern from the spotlighted ruin. It was close to the city’s size, in the shape of a creature that had hardened to stone, its sharp, pointed and cruel edges and tips of spikes and wings jutting like cutting knives. The mortal remains of a dragon frozen in stone. It had been frozen in its bestial last throes while it had been hooked upon the lip of the cavern’s rock, one winged forelimb’s clawed, three-fingered hand reaching for a single spot above the rock’s edge. It had been evident to every tourist who’d seen the stone echo of a dragon over the years that he’d been attempting to mercilessly slaughter the mortal he’d been targeting, based on the way the dragon’s crocodilian head was leaning forward on the serpentine neck, spiky-cheeked facial features except for the eyes (which were wide in shock) contorted in an open-jawed roar of murder, everything about the way its serpentine body below the precipice was twisted and frozen mid-movement telling of fury and motivation.</p><p>On more days than not, the cavern was as silent and empty as a tomb – in a way it was a tomb, to one of half the world’s most dreaded enemies – and today was no different. Until numerous tiny, soft sounds of stone cracking began to echo in the silent underground chamber. On the dragon’s roaring face and on its coiled, spike-lined neck, dark marks and cracks were forming and spreading in networks, like ruptured capillaries underneath an unbroken epidermis. The dark-grey even started giving way to a reddish shade as it continued to spread.</p><p>Then the first movement came – the wing-claw’s long, taloned fingers uncurled so sharply and suddenly it was a surprise the stony skin didn’t shatter. A rumbling growl like the impact of a rockfall echoed in the cavern, a faint glow appearing at the back of the open jaws’ throat – by now, the eyes were no longer entirely stone, developing a dark-golden texture. The nostrils hissed in and snorted out air, moving against the hardened, cracking flesh – which flexed and threatened to flake not unlike dry, dead skin – as lungs inside the gigantic beast started working again. Slowly but surely, a flame-like orange light began to seep into the monstrous dragon’s eyes. As the head and neck stiffly moved, Smaug’s snarling, scaly lips – which were regaining a bloodred colour like most of his body – first lowered, then pulled back above his serrated teeth again as sound emerged from inside his chest – starting as a strangled sound, but building in seconds to form a hiss which turned to a tremor-like growl.</p>
<hr/><p>Terra Xoam remained as uninhabited by intelligent permanent residents as it had been for over a thousand years, teeming only with lush vegetation and wildlife. People only came here to be spooked by the petrified dragon that lay inside the terra’s subterranean cavern, a wooden sign on a post advertising ‘THE BODY OF SMAUG, THIS WAY’. The terra was as quiet as ever in the sunny afternoon. Then something vibrated. A muffled sound from inside the earth, either the yawning of a great chasm or the roaring of a terrible beast – it barely sent a tremor to the terra’s surface, but it was enough to send a small flock of birds flying above the trees.</p><p>In a small clearing beside a rock-wall, there was a former tunnel entrance sealed tightly by a cave-in. The boulders rapidly glowed red with heat, before they were suddenly blasted away by the force of a vast inferno from inside. A <em>BOOM</em> ricocheted across the terra’s jungles as a plume of smoke and heat erupted, half-visible above the treeline. A few seconds later, there was another blast of sound, as a great dragon erupted from inside the terra amid the orange fire and smoke, bat-like massive wings beating majestically, looking like a serpent emerging from hell as he roared. His sound blasted and echoed across the mountaintop jungles, reducing every animal that heard it to silent terror.</p><p>Roaring to the skies as he flew once more, Smaug the last of the great fire-drakes only lingered around the terra to circle half of it, making sure there weren’t any mortals around who would’ve detected him and might follow him, before he flew out to the open skies with the cloudline below him. He had a destination and a specific goal on his mind.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The First Ember</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The blowtorch's flare lit up the crystal-workshop and reflected in Piper's goggles. Tinkering with crystals remained as always one of the young woman's greatest passions which could once in a while keep her up all night. Eight years she and her friends had been on Ionos, and there was still a lot about the Far Side she was still learning about. A door-knock prompted Piper to turn her hissing tool off.</p><p>"Come in," she beckoned, lifting her goggles. The door slid open and Aerrow entered.</p><p>"How's work on that Buhutaksa Crystal coming?" he asked, observing the glowing yellow stone Piper was working on and leaning against a support beam.</p><p>"Hm, pretty… volatile," Piper murmured. "I wouldn't go using it for keep-away." Aerrow snorted in agreement. "If I cut down its shell and increase its temperature just enough, it practically becomes a grenade." She added with a look at Aerrow like she were about to talk about a beloved relative's insane quirks. "Stork wants to splice it into his 'Flames of War' project-"</p><p>"<em>SURPRISE-ATTACK INCOMING</em>!" Finn's bellow made Aerrow turn in the same second that the <em>Condor</em>'s resident chicken frantically scarpered past. Finn popped into view from the doorway, only for Junko to emerge from a different door with a golden star-crystal in hand, chortling gamely – a fraction-of-a-second later, the crystal Finn had thrown exploded in a dust-plume on Junko, throwing him back. Junko collided with a tank, enough that a tight cable came loose, sending a pulley-suspended crate falling. The crate crashed into Piper's workshop table faster than she could do anything, throwing the contents to the air. The singing, explosive Buhutaksa Crystal was airborne, Piper yelping as she frantically scrambled to catch it, her grabs only momentarily halting the crystal's fall as she effectively juggled it. Yelling, Junko with Finn atop him staggered through the smoke-plume into the workshop, crashing with a ship-shaking sound to the floor. Piper kept juggling the crystal-</p><p>She missed a beat, it was falling. <em>Ah-!</em></p><p>Aerrow slid directly under and caught the crystal in both palms. He sighed, as did Piper. The crystal-mage smiled thankfully as her best friend returned the crystal, then she turned an angry glare on a certain pair of knuckleheads.</p><p>"Guys, can you do crystal-dodge somewhere you <em>won't</em> risk blowing us out of the sky?" Aerrow chided, glaring disapprovingly. Not a moment later, Junko gasped as if he'd been stabbed, a sound like broken glass tinkling. He removed a powder of broken fragments from his pocket.</p><p>"My grandmother's uncle's twice-removed cousin's Soul Bauble," he murmured in a fragile voice, looking at the powder as if it were a dead goldfish. "Finn! That's all I have left of her!" To his credit, Finn looked dismayed.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Junko," the bearded blonde apologised. "Uh, hey, I'll buy you a new one on Safukaw. All out of my expenses!" Junko's expression turned to an offended glare, and Piper quietly put her hand to her face. Not a moment later, Starling's voice came over the tannoy drawing everyone's attention.</p><p>"<em>We have a distress call from Terra Mikonosuin – there's been a major theft at the Elite Museum</em>."</p><p>"Duty calls," Aerrow said with a slight shrug. Finn had been practically saved by the bell on this one, as the <em>Condor</em> flew under the sky's aurora towards a destination – with an increase in motion and then a light and a snapping sound, it disappeared as its Dimension Drive cut distance.</p><hr/><p>The <em>Condor</em> emerged from the warp-shunt in a flash of light and a crack of sound a few miles from the terra, travel time cut by one-third. Terra Mikonosuin was large, and inside its slightly-rippling forcefield was aqua-blue sky; almost like a clear sky on Atmos, save for the flickering, unstable aurora which reflected rainbow-like colours. The terra was water on one side, city-covered land that was dominated mostly by skyscrapers on the other. Several airships patrolled the terra's sky, as did remote-collared blizzard-phoenix guards (so much like Atmos' phoenixes, save that they produced blue flames of a cold-causing energy). A square-shaped door opened in the forcefield dome to permit the carrier into one of the two most technologically-advanced terras in all Ionos.</p><p>The seven Storm Hawks met the Mikonosuinesh curator at the crime scene – one of the terra's native tall, tailless, lipless reptilian inhabitants.</p><p>"Thank you for coming, Storm Hawks," he said, bowing slightly. He gestured to the vast vault, cordoned off by laser barrier – two trained Shoùjièshì stood guard. "The museum's guards were on shift last night, but the thief took them all out without a single one raising the alarm." The curator's eyes looked sombrely at the floor. "There were… <em>no survivors</em>." The Storm Hawks' faces pinched in condolence. They'd seen their shares of death on both Atmos and Ionos, but one never got used to it – if anything, facing death so regularly made them value others' lives more.</p><p>"The thief only took one thing?" Piper asked carefully.</p><p>"Yes," the curator replied. "A very rare crystal dating back to the Core Expeditions." He gestured – some eighty feet across the vault, was an empty centre-place underneath the domed ceiling.</p><p>"Do you have any security footage?" Starling asked fluidly.</p><p>"The Crime Guards," the curator grumbled, meaning the terra's policing force, "took it for investigation. You'd have to speak to them."</p><p>"Piper; you and Radarr head to the station and check out that footage," Aerrow ordered. "The rest of us will stay here and look for anything the Crime Guards might have missed." Piper nodded, while Radarr chirped and faithfully saluted, though the greying ferret-creature's movement was slightly slower than it used to be.</p><p>Whilst Radarr and Piper departed, the squadron spent the next several minutes scouring amongst the desks and pedestals of museum artefacts. A statue of a hideous, open-jawed angel-gorgon caught Stork's interest as he rose from looking under its desk, earning a small "<em>Hmph</em>!" from the Merb. "Impressive." He raised a finger towards the statue's face and a jet of green gas was suddenly ejected at his head – when the cloud faded, Stork's spine was rigid, one eye bulging, before he fell over. Starling looked over a shoulder at Stork's impact, rolling her hazel eyes but smiling warmly.</p><p>"This girl looks like my type," Finn murmured towards a crouching Junko who was looking under tables – the blonde was holding up a vintage painting of a young woman he'd found. "Am I right?" Junko didn't reply or even look at him. Aerrow was searching parallel to Junko, sweeping a flashlight through the shadow under a large desk. He halted, green eyes slightly widening as he gasped.</p><p>"Hey, I've found something!" he shouted to alert everyone. He stood with the tiny, orange shard in hand. "Part of a crystal?" Suddenly at Aerrow's side, Stork all but snatched the sliver – he hummed contemplatively as he examined the sliver like a pest controller with droppings.</p><p>"Hmm… Better put this in a soundwave-proof containment box…"</p><p>Starling shook her head slightly, smiling, as everyone watched Stork quickly clad himself in a gas mask and gloves, delicately inserting the orange sliver into a match-sized box-machine.</p><p>"We'd better get that to Piper," Aerrow said. "Anything else?"</p><p>"Just this." Starling held up a single strip of white, floral flesh – a lone petal, which no doubt the Crime Guards must have thought a museum-visitor had tracked in earlier.</p><p>"And this… is where <em>my</em> brains come in," Stork murmured in a soft, gentlemanly manner, gesturing with a hand to his own chest, though he had a genuine grin on his face.</p><hr/><p>A ride on Piper's Heliscooter saved her and Radarr time, travelling several blocks across Mikonosuin – they fluidly weaved around and in-between the slow traffic of crystal-beast mounts and anti-gravity machines.</p><p>At the Hall, Piper exchanged a few words with the cyborg chief at the main desk. For years, the Storm Hawks hadn't been much more officially-recognised in Ionos than they'd been on Atmos, until after they'd led the victory against the Kitanen Empire in the Autumn Cascade which had permanently crippled the tyrannical empire.</p><p>After five minutes, Piper and Radarr were in the hall's evidence room. When Piper activated the security tablet and selected one of several cameras, it immediately projected a miniaturised, green-coloured light-hologram of part of the museum hall, shrunk down to fill only half the hall's evidence room. Nothing unusual on Ionos, this was just how advanced average technology on the Far Side was. Piper set the image to fast-forward and the miniaturised hologram rock-guards started jerking and speeding with super-speed; her amber eyes were narrowed. Soon a new, sweeping shape of a figure entered the fast-forwarding image, his guard-neutralising actions occurring in a second-and-a-half before Piper froze the image, eyes wide. She rewound slightly, then had the hologram-footage replay in normal speed. Piper' eyebrows slightly drew lower as she watched the new figure neutralise the guards one at a time, before finally stealing the crystal.</p><p>"Whoever did this has to be powerful," she murmured seriously. Radarr chirped, and he promptly pointed with a monkey-like finger. "Computer – focus on Grid Fifteen, Grid Twenty-Seven." The giant hologram zoomed in on the cloaked figure, freeze-framed mid-attack, and the figure became a solid and coloured hologram – his or her face was completely obscured inside the hood, but there appeared to be a cybernetic jaw-piece on the lower-jaw. The armour was largely numerous metal plates layered over each-other, though there was some soft padding, not an inch of skin exposed on the body, a crystal in hand. "This is our perp," Piper murmured, glancing at Radarr.</p><hr/><p>Smaug flew on open skies again, somewhat relieved to feel his muscles flexing and the wind under his wings, yet there was a dark flame inside his chest, thoughts turned more than once to claiming what was his. He made a point of steering and avoiding any aircraft that were passing amongst the clouds, so if their instruments picked him up, he'd be only a brief blip on their radar which the sheep could disregard in their contentedness. Smaug's mysterious <em>Good Samaritan</em> had told him of the Storm Hawks crossing to the Far Side of Atmos using the same door Cyclonis had used, and they'd told Smaug how to follow them since the original door was indisposed. Just to verify this unknown entity's word, Smaug had scouted a couple rural terras that had been Cyclonian-occupied last he'd heard or seen, and he'd found little sight of the occupiers, then he'd investigated the borders of Cyclonia itself at a distance – he'd found Terra Cyclonia was literally <em>gone</em>. Smaug was both satisfied by the removal of that pesky crystal-witch, and somewhat curious about how she'd been defeated. Next, Smaug flew straight to the foggy crags where he'd holed up all the treasure he'd collected on Atmos and had made his home, immediately soothed and elated to see that not an ounce of gold nor crystal was missing from the hoard, which he had to slink and run his foreclaws through lovingly. Though he wasn't particularly happy about it, Smaug knew he would have to part with his treasure for some time – he logically couldn't carry it all with him at once to where he was going. He caved in the mouth to his subterranean lair with a great swipe of his tail that collapsed the roof and the heat of his fire, ensuring the cavern would be tightly sealed against any potential intruders.</p><p>Next, Smaug flew to the first of two locations which his Good Samaritan had directed him towards – true to their words, Smaug found two crystals, unlike any species Smaug knew, amid millennia-old ruins on a wild terra. Then he flew northeast.</p><hr/><p>The <em>Condor</em> was sailing on pale-yellow skies. Inside the Skimmer bay which was currently acting as a laboratory, Piper and Starling were working side-by-side at the desk, Piper's scanning device examining the crystal-sliver Radarr had found whilst Starling was browsing through books on crystals. Piper and Starling shared a mutual interest in research, something Piper had been thrilled by when her Sky Knight idol had first joined the Storm Hawks officially, before the idolisation had given way to mutual comradery and friendship over the years.</p><p>The scanner's analysing process usually only took several minutes, but this crystal was evidently <em>very</em> unusual by Ionos' standards, as the holographic data was still computing after a-hundred-and-four minutes. Piper eventually found herself slouching over the desk, elbow propped and cheek resting on one hand as she waited. Starling found nothing useful from several of Piper's tomes, and the female Sky Knight left for more books, offering to get Piper some arkon-tea which she'd declined. Physical exhaustion from several missions occurring in one day coupled with getting little sleep were taking their toll on Piper as she sat in her restful position, amber eyes drifting. Piper welcomed her vision being cut off, naturally not registering her connection to consciousness ebbing.</p><p>
  <em>Glowing, golden-yellow eyes opened in the blackness, glaring at her. Massive jaws lunged with lightning-speed-</em>
</p><p>Piper startled in the chair as she returned to the living world with a sharp cry – Starling half-recoiled, the older Storm Hawk standing near Piper with a few books under her arm.</p><p>"Bad daydreams?" Starling asked dryly. It took Piper a moment to decide if she'd gotten it together – she hadn't dreamed of Smaug in maybe more than a year.</p><p>"I'm fine," Piper sighed. Starling sat in the chair next to Piper's and opened a book, but her concerned gaze lingered on Piper momentarily. The once-aloof lone Interceptor had turned into quite the team-player during eight years as a Storm Hawk. Piper shifted slightly, and grunted as something stung her above the waistline – realising she had something in her clothes, she pulled out an oval-shaped, heliotrope-purple crystal.</p><p>"Any luck deciphering that crystal we found at Hliþ-Díeglod yet?" Starling asked, observing the glowing stone. Piper <em>Hmph</em>'d with a fond smile.</p><p>"A lot, actually," Piper replied. "I've never seen anything like this crystal on Atmos <em>or</em> Ionos. It has a pretty tough shell and it's stable enough, but it's holding a <em>ton</em> of concentrated energy inside! I can't work out what that energy does yet, but I wouldn't expose this crystal to extreme temperatures." She returned the crystal to inside her clothing, a more comfortable position. She was regretting not getting some tea to perhaps unwind enough to stay smoothly conscious as she returned her attention to the crystal-sliver.</p><p>Nightfall came and three more hours passed on the <em>Condor</em>. Piper and Starling were both looking through Piper's old notes on northwestern-Atmos crystals when Starling suddenly cried out.</p><p>"Eureka!"</p><p>"What have you found?" Piper asked.</p><p>"A particularly small and dull crystal, found in the Midwest of Atmos," Starling said, pointing to an illustration which matched the sliver perfectly.</p><p>"The Birdsong Crystal," Piper murmured in quiet recognition, looking back at the sliver enduring the scanner's gentle laser. "But it's supposed to be nonexistent on Ionos. Unless…" After a pause, Starling's eyebrows furrowed.</p><p>"When I was undercover in Cyclonia, I learned there were several Birdsong Crystals being held on Terra Cyclonia itself," Starling murmured; "mostly mined from conquered terras and kept as prizes."</p><p>"And we've never recovered a lot of the shrapnel from when Cyclonia collapsed," Piper murmured, thinking back to when the Far Side door had torn Terra Cyclonia apart and swallowed its remains, ejecting it into the same place where everything that went through a Far Side door came out on Ionos. "Bits and pieces were still being recovered from the Emerald Valley for six years." Piper's brows furrowed slightly, brooding. "It's not much, but it's something." At that moment, the thumb-sized screen on her scanning device flashed and whined, indicating it had finished processing. A slot on the device immediately began spitting out a long tongue of paper with glyphs of code written on it. Piper tore the paper-strip loose, amber eyes shifting rapidly as she read the results. She was surprised as she looked up. "According to this crystal's memory, it was on Cyclonia. It's been all over Ionos from east to west to north since."</p><p>"Any status update?" Aerrow's voice spoke as the red-haired leader walked in.</p><p>"You couldn't have asked at a better time," Piper said mirthfully.</p><p>"Not much luck with the petal," Stork reported as he entered behind Aerrow with his crippled-looking shuffle. "It's very common – grows in the east, west and north of Ionos. It has a few cultural uses on different terras. Basic herbal medicine, mourning the deceased, and… a symbol of engagement."</p><p>"Guess the crystal is our best lead," Piper chirped in consolation with a shrug and a small smile.</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>On Atmos</strong>
</p><p>The terra wasn't as icy as Blizzaris, consisting of snow-capped peaks which turned to green meadows further down. Despite its beauty, the terra had only one tiny shack built on it, before a mountain's slope with forest close behind it.</p><p>"Lore and behold! The Hole of Creeps and Fears! Step inside for an experience that will haunt the depths of your soul for life!" The kilt-clad, feather-hat spider-humanoid exclaimed, gesturing with his cane to the shack. One of the letters in the <em>Hole of Creeps and Fears</em> sign above the door came loose and dangled upside-down with cruel timing. The visiting couple and their boy shared an uncertain look, then turned heel.</p><p>"Ah, very well then… Your loss!" The spider-humanoid called after them. The one who'd once been known as the Colonel groaned, removing his feather-topped hat from his dark-red hair, green eyes downcast on his eight-nostril face. In the eight years since Cyclonia's destruction, life on the lam hadn't been generous – after Cyclonia's downfall, he'd lost almost all his money and holdings which he'd invested in Cyclonia to appease Dragon Cyclonis, and this tourist trap was just the latest in a line of ways to get by that he'd attempted. "Forget about fresh supper, Jerry," the former-Colonel said to his three former-henchmen stood by the shack's doors, dressed in much cheaper clothes than the shirts and jewellery they'd once had. Their employer's voice was slightly breaking as he said while slinging a sack over his shoulders and heading towards the treeline, "We are on mushroom stew again." The ex-henchmen groaned forlornly to themselves.</p><p>As their boss disappeared, the three ex-henchmen at first ignored the small, warm wind – but when it swelled to an unnaturally-hot howl, their eyes widened in alarm, looking out on the empty meadow in front of the property as dust swirled and trees swayed harshly. The former-henchmen craned their heads, looking about for the unnatural weather's source – as the wind ebbed, they never looked in the right direction to see the dragon briefly materialise from one cloud under the peaks only to disappear into another. Near-silence save for the wind's lessened noise, as the ex-henchmen looked around from on the porch. A carrier-sized shadow suddenly whooshed swiftly and near-silently across half the gravel clearing, making the trio jump out of their skins. Apprehension quickly turned to fear and they looked skyward for any sign of the shadow's source.</p><p>
  <em>ROARRR!</em>
</p><p>Smaug shot low overhead, fast – his long tail smashed half the shack to kindling, throwing the three mortals to the air. They fell upon the clearing's gravel, stunned for but a moment, Smaug's shadow sweeping by above them again, then a henchman looked towards the sky with his eyes wide as the great dragon bellowed. Smaug didn't hesitate as he flew with his chest twelve feet above the ground, jaws open…</p><p>
  <em>CHOMP!</em>
</p><p>Bits of the mortals were sticking out between his lips and teeth as Smaug made a landing run – coming to a stop on all fours, orange light was shining up Smaug's neck, quickly cooking the prey inside his mouth before he gulped them down. He promptly turned his fiery eyes onto the remains of the collapsed shack.</p><p>Approaching the pitiful mortal-made dwelling, Smaug's wing-claw lazily brushed away the topmost layers of kindling. He snaked his head low, glowing eyes roving as he searched the rubble. The destroyed building had contained unusual beasts in liquid jars and ugly taxidermised beast-hybrids, mostly half-buried but intact. The spikes of Smaug's jawline brushed through a thin layer of debris, to reveal a very peculiar-looking doorframe which immediately had Smaug giving pause, piercing gaze focusing and reverberating growl rumbling. He recognised the door-pane's architecture – much too elegant for anything in this dead-end scam of a dwelling, the dark-coloured pane had brighter dull-golden engravings, whilst the topmost part of the door-frame formed a vaguely bat-like shape and was embedded with green crystals, sides ornately curvy.</p><p>Smaug's wing-claw brushed and unlogged more of the half-buried Far Side door. He curled his lip to reveal the tiny crystals he'd held inbetween his teeth and dislodged them. The glowing stones clattered atop the door-pane, and an energy-current promptly seemed to magnetise them towards the pane's central eye-slot, the crystals vanishing in one-at-a-time. Smaug felt a subtle shiver of crystal-magic along his scales, the door-like device humming rapidly to life. Bright-violet light shone over the door as its pane vanished to rippling energy – from there, with the green crystal's effects, the door began expanding and losing shape, until a gigantic circular pane of rippling energy was covering a league of land, horizontally positioned – large enough for Smaug to fly through. Smaug bared his teeth in a savage grin, then he reared and with a thrust of his vast wings, lifted in the air. His snout dipped forward, and he dived snout-first through the energy-pane, which snapped shut behind him.</p><p>Purple streaks and shapes shot all around Smaug's body, most of his draconic senses bewildered by the experience of cutting across space and time in this way.</p><p>In a flash, Smaug emerged into a vast valley of curving rock-spikes and emerald sky. He twisted his neck to look around, molten eyes ide in awe; drinking in the lights glittering amid the valley walls, the gigantic metal tower shining light at the valley's mouth, the flying creatures distantly wailing. Smaug pitched away to seek cover, gliding by a barren patch of the valley's rocky wall lest he be spotted before he knew enough about this new realm. He kept an eye and ear out for any activity approaching him, but if anything had noticed him, it wasn't approaching him yet. Partly, Smaug's brain registered how his body was soaking up the new, potent magical energy that lay within the Far Side's very <em>atmosphere</em>. As a dragon, Smaug was naturally attuned to the world's magic; it was partly why his kind had declined as the magics had withdrawn after the First Age. Now, Smaug felt his muscles growing more powerful and his fire's fuel becoming more potent in his belly, and it was enough to put a savage grin on his face.</p><p>He flew upon a section of the valley wall where he had some further cover and he twisted, soaring upward until the valley-side's jagged peaks had parted to give Smaug a view of further ridges jutting beyond the valley's limits. Fiery eyes shone brightly as Smaug thought of the one he'd come here for. There was no longer any Barrier Cliffs separating them – he was now that much closer to reclaiming her, and it made proverbial moths flutter in his dark heart. As the great dragon flew out onto the skies of Ionos, a deep, black and cruel cackle reverberated out of him.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Hoping you’ll R&amp;R and tell me what you think of everything, and I’ll see you all in about three weeks. ;)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. On the Prowl</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I hope everyone had a great Easter. (Sorry I forgot to wish you all a happy one before posting the last chapter.) Anyway, here’s the third chapter of this story.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Storm Hawks spent a week pursuing leads on the Birdsong Crystal. Piper and Radarr visited various terras, sticking up posters with an illustration of the crystal requesting to contact the Storm Hawks if anyone had any information. They began the search knocking on doors, chatting up the usual suspects in taverns and sky-restaurants (merchants and other people likely to collect debris from the Emerald Valley), asking them about the Birdsong Crystal. There was one incident where Finn prodded a beefy trader who turned out to be as mean as he looked, his disproportionate retaliation making Aerrow, Piper and Radarr wince painfully. No-one was impressed when a bruised-faced Finn proudly showed them a dirty handkerchief on which his attacker had crudely scrawled ‘MAYBE’. Aerrow put out an A.P.B. on the cloaked killer to every terra representative that was on friendly terms with the Storm Hawks. Unlike Atmos’ radio communication, the peoples of Ionos used holographic-projection broadcasts to communicate, much like a miniaturised version of what Master Cyclonis had used before her downfall – Crystalvision it was called here.</p><p>For days, the Storm Hawks had no leads; none of the traders, merchants and collectors they contacted recognised the Birdsong Crystal. Then their luck turned when they met a junk-collector who’d bought the Birdsong Crystal off a scrap-trader. The junk-collector had sold it on to a recycling enthusiast, reluctantly – the recycling woman had in turn lost it to a friend in a cloud-poker game, her friend had thrown it away when his husband ran off, and the scrap-people who’d fished the crystal out of the garbage had recognised it was unknown and sold it. Each owner’s address fit with the Birdsong Crystal’s memory of the many places it had zigzagged through. The Storm Hawks were on their way to the next buyer now.</p><p>The Storm Hawks had only ever been to Budhamka-Ghor three times in eight years. Budhamka-Ghor was at the very edge of Ionos, in the sense that it was built on the Barrier Cliffs that circled the spherical world and reached all the way into the stratosphere, dividing the Ionos on one side from Atmos on the other side. The monastery itself was built on a ledge in the Cliffs’ face, far above any ground yet many miles short of the Barrier Cliffs’ inhospitable top. It was cold all year round, and snow could remain unmelted for years on the slopes and ridges surrounding the monastery. The monastery was an ancient, one-floor building of stone with a square shape from a bird’s-eye-view, said to be tens of thousands of years old.</p><p>The Storm Hawks all exited down the <em>Condor</em>’s ramp onto the rocky ground dappled with snow, and were welcomed inside by one of the green-robed Conyan-Minjing Monks. They marched through the monastery’s corridors – much warmer than outside the monastery’s external walls, sustaining the crop-gardens that grew in the monastery’s central courtyard, which the corridors were open to on one side. When they arrived at the wooden door of the monastery resident who’d supposedly held the crystal, a monk stopped them to say the one inside would see only ‘the girl who breathes fire’. Which led to Piper entering alone while her friends waited outside.</p><p>The room inside had no natural light from the outside world, but it felt homey to Piper – it was suitably sized for living in, with a few crystal-scones on the walls, though the main source of light was a flickering fireplace on the far side of the room, near a large bed. A giant leaf-rug was on the floor, and near the fireplace with its back to Piper was a tall, wooden chair, so tall that she couldn’t see the occupant save folds of clothing at the armrests. Piper trepidly approached the chair. She neither saw nor heard any indication that the one in it had noticed her – and her senses were sharp after eight years of transforming into a dragon at will.</p><p>“Hello?” A creak as the occupant leaned forward, stringy hair dangling out of their robe’s head-concealing hood.</p><p>“Are you the dragon-girl?” the woman in the chair croaked in a tired, elderly voice.</p><p>“Well, I do turn into one,” Piper responded, shrugging and grinning slightly. A smile peeked from under the figure’s hood.</p><p>“I am Kala, my dear,” she murmured. “It is good to meet you. Would you like a seat?”</p><p>“Thanks,” Piper said sincerely as she smiled. She dragged a stool towards the fireplace and sat opposite the old woman. “I’m Piper. How did you know I was coming?”</p><p>“I saw it would happen one day, dear,” the hooded woman replied, looking back to the glinting flames.</p><p>“How?” Piper asked after a pause. The woman turned her head, and Piper’s amber eyes widened subtly. Under the hood, eyes were greyed-over, networks of pale-silver veins spreading through the woman’s eyelids and sockets in twin webs.</p><p>“I see things before they come, ever since I was four,” the woman murmured. She didn’t seem all that self-conscious about her deformity nor entirely open about it, as if she was just used to it. “My mum, she had an accident with a pretty, bright-blue crystal – shaped like a butterfly. She said we could see what would happen tomorrow with it.”</p><p>“A Bakarat Stone,” Piper murmured in realisation.</p><p>“I’ve never heard what other people call it before,” the woman croaked. “I remember my mum called it a funny word like that. I think that was it.” A brief pause passed. If the woman was living here with the Conyan-Minjing, then Piper didn’t need to ask to know if the blind woman had any living family. The crystal-mage felt a pang of empathy, knowing what it was like to lose parents so young.</p><p>“Kala,” Piper began. She held up the crystal to the blind girl. “Did you know about this Birdsong Crystal the last time it was here?” Kala’s bony hand took the sliver-sized crystal, and she felt it thoroughly.</p><p>“I’m sorry, after the accident, I don’t feel things so clearly anymore, and I can’t hear well either,” Kala murmured. “It’s why I don’t leave this room a lot.” A pause, then: “What colour is it? The monks always tell me what colour crystals are.”</p><p>“It’s bright orange,” Piper murmured.</p><p>“Yes, I think so…” Kala mumbled to herself, scarred eyes widening. “<em>I</em> used to have a crystal just like this! One of the monks gave it to me as a good luck charm. But then I fell on the stairs, and he sold it for being a bad-luck charm.” Piper couldn’t help chortling, prompting the blind woman to smile.</p><p>Piper let the good mood hang a while before she asked, “Do you know who he sold it to?”</p><hr/><p>Finn was resting his moustached face in one hand, elbow propped atop the stone windowsill as he fiddled with one of the leaves of the warm garden on the other side – until a thin vine slapped his hand just like his grandmother used to, making him recoil. Finn scowled angrily and raised a fist, until Stork stayed his arm.</p><p>“Maybe write a song about how awful that kind of plant is?” he suggested.</p><p>“Huh. Fine.” Finn groaned. Finn’s guitar skills hadn’t developed at all since his adolescence, but he’d taken up other hobbies. Not a moment later, Piper emerged from the room, the monk-guard moving to close the wooden door behind her.</p><p>“Uh, you find anything?” Junko asked with a shrug as all eyes were on her, Radarr also raising his head and chirping for clarification.</p><p>“Yep,” Piper said with a nod. “The Birdsong Crystal used to be here, then one of the monks gave it away to a former-resident on Terra Xiaofezi.” Aerrow and Starling shared an uncertain look.</p><p>“The thief at the museum doesn’t seem like the type who’d be living there,” Aerrow murmured.</p><p>“There isn’t that much unchecked room to hole up and hide on that terra,” Piper pointed out.</p><p>“So this is, um, probably just another uh, stepping-stone?” Junko said.</p><p>“Wunderbar,” Finn murmured, rolling his blue eyes.</p><p>A few minutes later, the <em>Condor</em> was flying out to the skies from Budhamka-Ghor, a monk outside the monastery entrance watching it go.</p><hr/><p>In the windowless, firelit room, Kala sitting in front of the fireplace pulled a mechanical disk out from her long robe and activated it. A projection of an obscured white figure appeared, not that her grey eyes saw.</p><p>“The Storm Hawks just came and went seeking leads on the Birdsong Crystal,” she reported coldly. “They are headed to Terra Xiaofezi.”</p><p>“<em>I see</em>,” an electronic voice reported through the Crystalvision disk, scrambled and distorted to the point it had no gender. “<em>Thank you for your help. Deactivate Sleep Crystal programming – codeword Crimson Knight</em>.” The holographic figure seemed to raise a whited-out arm-appendage in a gesture, and in an instant Kala juddered, pale-purple light flashing across her blind eyes. The Crystalvision disk deactivated and disappeared in a flash, a moment before the blind old woman slumped forward, limp as a disused ventriloquist’s dummy.</p><hr/><p>In an underground cavern, a figure’s gloved hand lifted its finger off the kill-switch it had pressed on a console of many controls.</p><p>“<em>Perfect timing</em>…” the figure murmured in its genderless, electronic voice, raising its hooded head.</p><hr/><p>The Storm Hawks had to take a detour responding to a distress call on their way to Terra Xiaofezi – no biggie so long as they were quick, they agreed, since as far as they knew, their shadowy thief-assassin adversary didn’t know they were coming nor had any of the terras they were in contact with reported any similar thefts since Terra Mikonosuin. As it turned out, they spent six hours of the night stuck on a remote terra with shipwrecked Aurora Comets, fighting off the Bone-Wraiths. Afterwards, the Storm Hawks got some missed rest before dawn, resuming their course to Xiaofezi.</p><p>Terra Xiaofezi was a flat, dry, light-brown rock underneath an orange, dusty sky, and most of its technological defences were limited. Still, when the <em>Condor</em> approached close enough to the terra, the moisture-less clouds on either side of the ship formed faces which took notice, opening gorilla-toothed mouths. They snarled furiously at the ship, and gave chase.</p><p>Stork took notice – he increased the <em>Condor</em>’s speed to try and shake the pursuing cloud-gorillas off. They needed to outfly them to the terra’s surface, then they’d be left alone.</p><p>But one of the monstrous living clouds was approaching fast, flying by and past the ship’s stern. Opening its mouth unnaturally-wide as its eye-pockets flashed green, the cloud-gorilla formed wispy clawed hands and rammed into the ship’s side. The whole <em>Condor</em> shook with the force of the cloud-gorilla’s attack, nearly unbalancing everyone on the bridge. Dry wind-wisps were spreading like tentacles over the windshields.</p><p>Aerrow scowled, then yelled into a microphone; “Piper, now!”</p><p>The Skimmer bay’s doors opened a split-second before Piper’s Heliscooter shot out, barely missing the miniature cloud-storm on the ship’s exterior. As the Heliscooter rose somewhat higher, Piper barely ducked in time to avoid another cloud-gorilla striking her, the glowing-eyed beast screeching as it hurtled past. Not missing a beat, she removed and threw her yellow crystal. It sailed in a straight line through the air, towards the desert-terra. It suddenly exploded mid-air, opening a carrier-sized circular hole with glowing edges, a breach in the formerly-invisible barrier. A horrid shriek alerted Piper, and she sharply lifted her Heliscooter to avoid another cloud-gorilla.</p><p>Back at the <em>Condor</em>, the ship was groaning, metal producing sparks as the latched-on cloud-gorilla strangled and dragged the engine against where Stork was trying to guide it. Junko sprinted forth through the open Skimmer bay and threw a crystal outside – it exploded upon touching the winds at the door’s threshold, making the cloud-gorilla shriek and recoil its misty tendrils. It was enough for the <em>Condor</em> to level out of its downward dip. Junko laughed victoriously.</p><p>Getting atop her Heliscooter, Piper twirled her crystal-staff and fired a crystal-shot. It hit one of the two encroaching cloud-gorillas, making it reel back with a pained shriek. Not three seconds later, the other cloud-gorilla plus the one attached to the <em>Condor</em> pulled back. Piper’s ride and the <em>Condor</em> were shooting straight towards the forcefield’s opening, which was already shrinking. The airborne vessels shot through, one right behind the other, a second before the hole would’ve become too tight for the carrier.</p><p>“<em>Yes</em>!” Piper exclaimed. Pumping her fist.</p><p>The <em>Condor</em> approached the terra’s harsh ground and slowed, landing apparatus extending and enabling the carrier to nest fluidly. The carrier had landed near one of the terra’s borderline-ruinous villages, streets lined with decaying stone houses and a few multi-floor buildings of old architecture. Local villagers, mostly wearing rags over scrawny figures, were emerging from the buildings and muttering to themselves. Among the residents to emerge was what could’ve only been the village-lord, identifiable by his noble white robe and his bloated belly which didn’t fit with his scrawny limbs, a scowl on his prominent-boned face. Terra Xiaofezi was one of the more isolationist and traditionalist terras in Ionos (actually probably the <em>most</em> traditionalist), and practically the only people who had any reason to actually live on the terra were its locals and their poorly descendants – the Xiaofezians had an insectoid-looking skeletal structure and joints but with skin and (malnourished) muscles over it, with mammalian-looking mouths that held several rows of razor-sharp teeth, and four pairs of bright-blue eyes.</p><p>As six Storm Hawks exited their ship and the seventh landed her sky-ride near them, two orb-shaped crystalline drones floated forward, their appendages crackling with lightning in warning. The Storm Hawks all put up their hands, the cold expressions most of them wore hinting at how unthreatened they were. A small crowd was forming, while the village lord marched through the ranks towards the squadron.</p><p>“Who <em>dares</em> defile Xiaofezi?” the approaching lord called in his tomcat-like purr of a voice.</p><p>“We’re the Storm Hawks,” Aerrow announced, green eyes narrowed as he kept his hands raised. “We come in peace. We’re here following the trail of a murderer.”</p><p>“Oh?” the lord all but boomed as he reached the squadron, raising an eyebrow with a plate-like bone underneath his flesh. “And why should you think you’ll find him <em>here</em>?” Aerrow’s eyebrows were firm as he met the gaze of the lord who stood two feet taller than him.</p><p>“Because we believe this belonged to him,” Aerrow replied, holding up the Birdsong Crystal in one hand. The lord’s eyes widened at the sight of the glowing sliver of a crystal.</p><p>“What an interesting <em>valuable</em> you’ve got there…” he purred. Aerrow immediately lowered it before he could try grabbing it.</p><p>“This crystal was on your terra before two years ago,” Aerrow said, sticking to the point. “It came from Budhamka-Ghor.” The lord hummed somewhat deliberately, smirking as he stroked the swollen flesh beneath his chin.</p><p>“It does seem… <em>vaguely</em> familiar,” he murmured. “Perhaps my memory will be jogged over dinner. If you will be my guests.” He gestured with a bow, but his smug tone all but screamed of the lord’s haughtiness.</p><p>“Fine,” Aerrow murmured calmly and without hostility, scowling ever-so-slightly.</p><hr/><p>Dinner with the village-lord wasn’t a pleasant affair. Everyone was sat around a C-shaped arrangement of long tables – the villagers were miserably eating morsel-sized meals. The Storm Hawks – seated side-by-side to each-other next to the lord – were served food not much better, whilst the lord munched on a moderate-sized bird and drunk from two cups. Piper and Starling silently glared over at the gluttonous lord. Behaviour like this wasn’t uncommon in the slightest. Many on Ionos had tried to help Terra Xiaofezi by offering it aid, but… well, its elite stubbornly didn’t want any aid from outsiders and their alleged inferiors, and the civilians seemingly didn’t want traditions to change badly enough either.</p><p>“Hmm… Ah, yes, you were asking me about that remarkable jewel?” The lord suddenly exclaimed, bird-meat juices on his heavy chin as he turned to Aerrow.</p><p>“That’s right,” Aerrow replied evenly, arching an eyebrow.</p><p>“There was an outsider, by the name Blacktalon who came to our terra,” the lord explained, picking a bit of meat-skin off his swollen belly and eating it. “Requested my protection for a week, they said. Supposedly they were fleeing from sky-pirates.”</p><p>“She or he…?” Piper asked almost trepidly.</p><p>“I don’t know which,” the lord replied. “They kept their face and their voice masked at all times. Never saw a bit of their clothing. Though they kept themselves in line while they were here.”</p><p><em>I bet they thought you weren’t worth stealing from</em>, Piper thought with an unimpressed scowl.</p><p>“They stayed in the old cave up above,” the lord explained. Meaning the cave on the village-overlooking hill.</p><hr/><p>The Storm Hawks didn’t waste time, heading to the cave in question once they were excused by the Xiaofezian lord. The place had definitely been lived in once – it was frankly like a vacated empty house, where anything non-personal and non-valuable had been left behind. There were bits and pieces of old equipment that had been unused for a long time, but nothing identifying that they found right away, scouring the curves, corners and contents with flashlights. Finn moved an empty crate and uncovered a palm-sized Liver-Serpent Crystal like the Nightcrawlers had used – the holographic monster emerged shrieking aggressively at the disturbance, and Finn all but pounced into Junko’s arms with a yell, before the creature faded back into the crystal.</p><p>“Uh…” Finn cleared his throat into his hand awkwardly. “My bad.” Junko promptly let Finn slide to the floor, then firmly turned his back on the indignant sharpshooter.</p><p>“There must be something telling in here,” Aerrow murmured, opening a crate to find it empty.</p><p>“We’d better hope so,” Stork spoke up while looking around. “Otherwise, we’re at a dead end with <em>Blacktalon</em>.”</p><p>“Whatever he or she wants, they robbed Terra Mikonosuin like it was nothing, and killed five of its best security-force like it was nothing,” Piper said as she cleared dust and soot from an empty bookshelf, finding nothing hidden.</p><p>“Piper’s right,” Starling said sternly, turning from where she was investigating a manmade-looking crack in the wall. “We can’t give up just yet.” Junko opened a pair of twin cupboards on the wall, disturbing a cloud of dust as he did – the moment it entered his nostrils below his tiny snout-horn, the wallop’s facial muscles tensed and seized up, and he found himself fighting a brief battle to keep control of his airways.</p><p>
  <em>AAH-SHOO!</em>
</p><p>The force literally blew the rest of the squadron off their feet along with a few of the cave’s items. As everyone who’d fallen somewhere glared in mild exasperation, a bleary-eyed Junko wiped his face on his muscular forearm.</p><p>“Uh… I think I found the pantry,” Junko murmured nervously. Finn irritably lifted a crate off his head, then grunted aloud when a small booklet fell from the crate onto his thigh.</p><p>“Hey, check it out!” Finn exclaimed, picking up the blank-covered journal. Piper, Aerrow and Stork immediately came over, Piper first taking the journal and scrolling through its pages.</p><p>“A journal?” Stork murmured.</p><p>“Why would Blacktalon leave something as valuable as that – and for whom?” Aerrow questioned.</p><p>“There’s only one page with anything on it; the others have all been torn out,” Piper murmured. “This is the last page, but it only has a set of numbers. It looks like coordinates. Perhaps it’s where he went next.” Aerrow nodded his head, then addressed the rest of his squadron.</p><p>“Storm Hawks, keep looking,” he said. “In ten minutes, we fly!”</p><p>The Storm Hawks didn’t find anything else in the cave before they left. On the <em>Condor</em>, Stork fluidly traced a straight line on a map based on the journal’s coordinates; from their current location, to a remote terra-outcropping that were essentially just no-mans-land for anyone’s taking. It was a significant distance from Terra Xiaofezi, and it would take roughly twenty hours’ flight excluding pit-stops and sleep to get there.</p><p>Though their course would be interrupted by a distress call about Magnamon activity near Terra Bundarlika. One which, as they found out when they arrived, was a trap set by a Kitanen cell, who were planning to bring down the Storm Hawks by testing on them a biological plague they’d intended to use on the neighbouring Terra Bundarlika. Aerrow and Piper got free and easily neutralised the whole operation – the female Kitan commander tried to make a getaway on her Kitan-Eel, but she wasn’t able to outfly a pair of dragons, and she surrendered peacefully. Then the Storm Hawks were back to their main pursuit.</p><hr/><p>The lychee-carrier droned through the multicoloured clouds on its course, the young, jackal-humanoid pilot whistling a tune to herself that her mother had taught her. Her tune abruptly stopped when for but a split-second her ship’s radar started bleeping – a large shape thirty degrees to the portside. After four bleeps, the shape disappeared off her radar. Bemused, the pilot looked out her windshield in the portside and then starboard direction, seeing nothing but clouds and the odd spiky rock around her. After a couple seconds, she shrugged to herself and resumed whistling. The carrier-sized, winged silhouette swooped seemingly out of nowhere.</p><p>
  <em>CRASHHH!</em>
</p><p>The pilot cried out as the entire ship was violently jerked, making the equipment around her fizzle. Then another devastating thump hit, making her squeak – before the ship began to dip with its engine disabled.</p><p>The ship fell in a diagonal dip, destroyed engines trailing smoke. It soon crashed to a violent stop atop a rocky dwarf-terra, close to the cloudline.</p><p>The skinny pilot was out of the wreckage in a few moments, clutching her head and groaning. She didn’t see the airborne silhouette slinking through the clouds’ fog with the fluidity of a great eel, vast and cruel-shaped wings spread. Not until it cast its shadow over her face and her eyes widened, the massive creature landing atop the rock with little sound for something so huge. A deep, powerful voice chuckled darkly, resonating through the air.</p><hr/><p>The <em>Condor</em> was flying late into the night when most of the squadron had retired to bed. Piper was among those who’d retired, having removed her headband and switched her day-clothing for a simple shirt and knee-length pyjama pants, though her sleep wasn’t entirely pleasant.</p><p>
  <em>The whole squadron were flying among cloud-banks on their sky-rides including the Stork-Mobile, under a bright-green sky with a yellow aurora. Piper didn’t know precisely what they were here for, only that it was urgent and that things were about to get dark as they flew towards a barren-looking terra coated with Kitanen operating stations and towers.</em>
</p><p><em>“</em>Attack<em>!” Aerrow yelled, pointing one of his blue-glowing lightning-blades. Finn, Junko, Starling and Stork all shot ahead, whilst Piper leapt up on her Heliscooter, and in the dream her shape morphed inside a corona of pale-blue light and enlarged, until she was transformed into her morning-indigo dragoness form. Aerrow leapt from his Skimmer and likewise transformed into his giant red dragon form. The two dragons flew on their beating wings towards their destination with the rest of their squadron. Piper saw Kitanen soldiers below priming and aiming turrets. It made a growl rumble almost-involuntarily in dragon-Piper as she glowered at them. Aerrow flew ahead of her – and suddenly the skies around Piper faded to darkness, making her beat her wings to slow herself and hover.</em></p><p>
  <em>She turned her head, looking around at the infinite-seeming blackness around her. She raised her hand, and a surprised yelp escaped her throat when instead of her three-fingered, taloned hand attached to her wing hinge, she saw her five-fingered, fleshy human hand. The human woman looked around, feeling oddly calm though she remained confused and concerned.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Hello?” she called into the blackness. No echo bounced back. Then she turned in the right direction. There was a dim red light seeming far ahead through the blackness. Piper didn’t waste a second before sprinting fast towards the light. Thankfully, the red light got closer to her the more she ran, rather than staying the same distance away as a part of her had automatically momentarily feared it would – it kind of reminded Piper of a fireplace, she could even hear a similar sound coming from it…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Then she shot through a large fissure out of the darkness, into a landscape of light and colours – and she wished she hadn’t.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She was standing on a ledge, overlooking a terra engulfed in an inferno – bright-orange flames had turned the once-snowy landscape of Terra Blizzaris into a scorching, flayed rock, the thick smoke blotting the sky stained bloodred by the firelight. Piper saw Blizzarians and humans covered in flames as if they were made of it, thrashing and screaming in the fiery streets before they promptly dropped dead. Her amber eyes were wide in horror, and she wanted to tear them away from the awful sight which awoke some of her darkest memories, but she couldn’t.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Then she heard the roar, its source obscured from sight by the smoke. It was a dragon’s roar – it was different from her dragon form’s roar in that it had slightly less of a hiss in it, different from Aerrow’s in that it was far harsher and close to grating. A tiny shard of her mind recognised the dragon’s vocalisations but was muted under the majority of her mind ignoring it, knowing it couldn’t be him. Piper kept her eyes on the bloodred smoky sky – then, without warning, a shadowed dragon burst through the haze, roaring, its bright, fiery-yellow eyes gleaming as it shot straight towards her. Piper opened her mouth in a cry, too late to do anything as the dragon’s jaws snapped down upon her-</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-a blinding white flash upon a globe-</em>
</p><p>And Piper shot up in bed with a cry, eyes wide, body burning, her indigo hair stick to her forehead with sweat.</p><p>A few minutes later, Piper found herself sitting in her pyjamas at the bridge’s circular table, a hot cup in hand as she sipped from it to try and soothe herself. She was practically alone – Stork who’d stayed up the longest to manage the ship, had put it on autopilot and checked out, while the cream-feathered chicken was asleep in its nest near the wall. The ship felt haunting yet comforting when she was alone at night with no-one else around. She heard the hiss of the bridge’s door opening as Starling entered.</p><p>“Trouble sleeping?” Starling asked, a small smile on her face as she approached.</p><p>“Yeah,” Piper sighed. “What are you doing up?”</p><p>“I’ve gotten enough sleep for one night,” Starling replied, getting a hot drink of her own from the machine by the wall. She joined Piper at the table. “I heard you from the bathroom.” Piper pursued her lips apologetically. “You want to talk?” Piper’s eyes shifted briefly, seriously contemplating.</p><p>“I dreamed of Smaug,” Piper admitted. Starling lowered her drink from her mouth, face shifting with some sympathy. They hadn’t spoken much of Smaug in a long time, but both the female Storm Hawks didn’t have to think hard to remember him clearly. They’d fought all kinda of rogues, beasts and other villains on Atmos and Ionos, but Smaug… he’d been something else next to all of them. They’d both witnessed the fire and death he wrought upon groups, crew-filled carriers and often entire terras up-close, the way he’d revelled in the wanton annihilation; all to satisfy the bestial-looking yet highly-intelligent monster’s lust for crystals and precious metals.</p><p>Piper went on, seeing the explanation through, “It was dark, and there was this light. I followed it, and then I came out on a terra. It was burning, all of it…” In her own eyes, Piper was back in the fiery hellscape as she recounted a brief but horrific period from her adolescence where she’d witnessed terrible things. “Just like all those other terras Smaug destroyed. The ones he burned when he had control over the Smaug-bond.” Her hand drifted to and rubbed her sky-blue crystal-shard necklace, seeking comfort. A pause passed. Starling reached forward and simply held Piper’s hand with her own across the table, a physical gesture of company which the female Sky Knight had used a couple times when Piper had been troubled. Eventually, Piper reciprocated Starling’s small smile with a genuine one of her own.</p><p>“Since we’re up, perhaps we should try meditating?” Starling suggested with a friendly, almost cheeky grin. That made Piper laugh into her hand for a second.</p><p>“Since when do you meditate?” While the two women did do team-bonding exercises on a regular enough basis, crystal-meditation was truly <em>not</em> something Starling had ever found a lot of fulfilment in. In response to the question, the Sky Knight shrugged her shoulders.</p><p>“A girl’s got to find some way to kill the night.”</p><hr/><p>The Kitanen commander was in a dull-grey cell in the single-floor policing building of the terra, reading a book. Behind her eyes, a cold, dark storm was raging. She’d never once in all her career in the great armada of the Home Terra failed before yesterday. And it couldn’t have ended with her dying honourably in combat; which made her hate the Storm Hawks who’d defeated her operation at Bundarlika all the more.</p><p>Her second night in this fetid prison had gone by with minimal disturbance, when the whole building suddenly shuddered without warning, startling her. The Kitanen heard voices yelling at the building’s front maybe twenty feet down the hall from her cell, and she approached the bars. She heard a bestial-sounding roar, the kind which instantly struck fear in the heart as primeval instincts of <em>danger</em> were activated – she saw a rush of flames like from a great flamethrower, orange light and death-screams. For a moment, there was nothing more as she waited on baited breath, unsure of what was going on. Who, or what was this? Were they friend or foe, had that blast of fire come from a tamed beast or from some mighty weapon?</p><p>
  <em>CRASHH-CRACKKK!</em>
</p><p>She threw her body against the bars slightly as the whole cell wall behind her shattered in a small plume of dust and stone. She coughed amid the clearing dust-cloud, but the stinging of the particles in her windpipe was completely forgotten when she saw what was outside, towering high above her cell. She was completely transfixed, her mind which couldn’t make her paralysed body move now filled with awe and horror. A deep growl reverberated inside her rib-cage.</p><p>“Good evening,” a deep, articulated voice growled. “Do you have a few minutes?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I know this chapter and the last one have been relatively short, but I can assure you that the next chapter is the one where we got to see some real plot development. ;)<br/>I’ll see you all in roughly three weeks again. ;)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. An Unexpected Reunion</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After two nights’ flying, the Storm Hawks were approaching their destination. The terra the coordinates pointed to was at the far end of the terra-outcropping. The <em>Condor</em> flew by idyllic-looking, vegetation-dappled terras under a dull-yellow sky’s aqua aurora, banks of wispy green clouds rolling far below the terras’ tops – it was the sort of place where one might build a rural cottage. The carrier crawled towards the rolling, grassy hill of a terra, dominated by a single cottage, at a slow pace – it didn’t look abandoned, but the owner didn’t exactly have a garden on the plain hill. The landing legs extended upon the terra’s sole hill, at the crest of which was a single cottage.</p><p>In the Skimmer bay, six Storm Hawks (minus Stork) were arming up, a chicken approaching Radarr to peck him for good luck. Moments later, the squadron were descending the <em>Condor</em>’s ramp to the rolling hill, and moving straight towards the cottage – no-one had yet emerged. Aerrow craned his head, trying to see if there was something inside the cottage’s window, though a curtain veiled it. Piper by his shoulder stopped three feet short of the door, as if fearing it might be booby-trapped. Aerrow silently gestured to Finn and Starling for them to take up positions on either side of the cottage’s front door, their weapons ready. Piper could taste the mounting tension, the sense of unease like the calm before a storm. Aerrow nodded at Finn and Starling, drawing his lightning-blades, and Piper readied her crystal-staff whilst mentally touched her powers. Finn and Starling moved – halfway, before the door creaking open made them both halt.</p><p>“<em>Hello</em>?” The Storm Hawks had all frozen but hadn’t let their guard down as the door pulled half-open. The voice that had spoken from inside was electronic with no determinate gender, intonation sounding innocently surprised. Inside the door, a dark-blue hood concealed the speaker’s head in shadow, except a metal piece on their jawline. “<em>Storm Hawks?!</em>” The cloaked figure’s electronic voice sounded innocently surprised – small lights flashed from the jawline-piece with each syllable. “<em>I hope I haven’t done anything wrong, I simply try to get by with my work up here</em>.”</p><p>Aerrow silently contemplated, though his voice pinched in uncertainty. “We’re here because we wanted to ask some questions about your home and anyone who might’ve lived here.”</p><p>“<em>I see</em>,” the hooded, electronic-voiced figure murmured quite affably, stepping half-outside. “<em>Come, let us speak out here – it is a wonderful day after all</em>.” As the figure spoke, Piper quietly nudged Aerrow, then gestured with the slightest motion of her head. At the cottage’s corner, flowers – with fleshy white petals – were growing on curving vines. Aerrow’s green eyes narrowed an inch. “<em>I only obtained this house for my work on manufacturing my own crystals. The solitude does wonders for one’s focus</em>.” On the speaking figure’s flank, Starling had noticed her leader’s body language and gave Finn a silent glance. “<em>You could say this is only a substitute for my true home.</em>”</p><p>The figure had stepped almost into the centre of their audience. A pause passed, in which the hooded figure was unmoving – save the slightest glimpses of eyes inside the shadow shifting from one Storm Hawk to another. Finn and Starling’s gazes shifted. Aerrow’s didn’t shift in the slightest. Aerrow lifted his ignited blades, and the cloaked figure leapt ten feet into the air, padded and armoured legs revealed to be gangly and spider-like as the cloak flew about. Mid-leap, the figure unsheathed from their back and ignited a long-handled, double-bladed weapon, fluidly spinning and unleashing mauve-pink energy bolts. Piper and Aerrow leapt to avoid one blast, Finn somersaulted sideways to avoid another. The sharpshooter fired his crossbow in retaliation. Returning to the ground, the figure spun his energy-guandao like a protective wheel, deflecting Finn’s shots. Yelling, Junko charged the figure from behind – the cloaked one deflected the wallop’s knuckle-buster with either guandao-blade, then kicked out at Junko’s middle, sending the heavy wallop hurtling and kicking up dirt. While the figure’s back was momentarily turned, Piper leapt and tried to bring her crystal-staff’s point down on them, but the figure spun just in time to fire a blast into her stomach, reversing her momentum.</p><p>“<em>YEARGH</em>!” The figure wasn’t fast enough to dodge Starling, her energy-nunchuks striking the head brutally. A jawline-moulded cybernetic brace hit the earth. Sliding to a stop, the figure was in a hunched stance, white hair visible above the gloved hand on their head. The Storm Hawks had by now regrouped and glared at the figure.</p><p>“Heh. Nice shot, young Storm Hawk!” The figure stood and removed the hand from his grinning face – despite the spiky hair’s milky colour and the mauve-pink irises, the long and gaunt face with high cheekbones and a pointed chin was unmistakeable. The Storm Hawks on the ground were staring, slack-jawed momentarily – on the bridge of the <em>Condor</em> parked on the terra, Stork’s jaw was slack as his eyes slowly widened.</p><p>“<em>Dark Ace</em>?!” Aerrow gasped, green eyes wide.</p><p>A stalemate passed, the gathered Storm Hawks staring at the unhooded figure who in turn stared them down. Hair and eye colours were changed and he had no sideburns nor a metal helm, but it was definitely him.</p><p>“Cyclonis blew this guy up with Ionos crystal-energy and he <em>STILL</em> <em>comes back</em>?!” Junko exclaimed.</p><p>“How are you <em>alive</em>?!” Starling exclaimed – hearing her raise her voice so could’ve turned some of the other Storm Hawks to stone. The gaunt brute chuckled – the Storm Hawks didn’t know whether to be more disturbed by the familiar voice or the way the laughter sounded lighter and softer than the Dark Ace’s old mocking cackle.</p><p>“Now that we’ve done away with the masquerade, Storm Hawks, I suppose I should properly introduce myself,” he said. Okay, those kinds of manners were quite unlike the Dark Ace, Piper thought. “I am not the Dark Ace, though I am currently wearing his flesh and bones, you might say. So sorry you and your ex couldn’t get another dance.” He directed the last sentence at Aerrow with a cheeky grin. “I am Blacktalon, child of Atmos.” He held his crackling energy-guandao up, arm straight. “And I have to say, Storm Hawks, I’m slightly disappointed that you found me perfectly <em>on-time</em>.”</p><p>“On-time?” Junko exclaimed, grey eyes narrowed. “We tracked you!”</p><p>“You asked left and right where that Birdsong Crystal came from, and you knew I was here by the flowers in that window,” the white-haired Dark Ace – Blacktalon – said, pointing his guandao towards the cottage’s very same flower-vines. “And you took no more nor less time than I expected you to. Now that we’ve got the pleasantries over and done with, I’m sorry to inform you all that I have big plans afoot. And I <em>won’t</em> have any of you spoiling it!”</p><p>That was all the warning Blacktalon gave before he suddenly charged with a war-cry. He came at Starling first, deflecting her crystal-nunchuks’ first strike, though she ducked to avoid the kicking move that had finished Junko; Blacktalon leapt backwards to stop her kicking his feet out from under him. He knocked his energy-guandao’s staff into Starling’s chin, throwing her backwards. He turned and spun his guandao as a protective wheel again to block several shots from Finn, then a guandao-blade fired an energy-bolt which knocked Finn straight into the cottage’s wall. Radarr pounced for Blacktalon’s leg, but the pink-eyed man saw him coming, batting him to the air with a guandao-blade. The aged ferret-creature hit the dirt, large eyes bleary – near him, Aerrow’s face darkened. Bright-blue crystal-energy rapidly surrounded Aerrow and pooled to his eyes. Blacktalon’s mauve eyes widened slightly. Aerrow unleashed the Lightning Claw. Blacktalon’s guandao-spinning shield-move absorbed the lightning-ball, and he was only sent sliding backwards on his heels. Aerrow returned to earth in a crouch. Blacktalon grinned, before his guandao fired another energy-bolt. Aerrow criss-crossed his lightning-blades to shield him, but it still threw him into the cottage, air knocked from him.</p><p>“<em>Lightning Strike</em>!” Piper yelled, firing a blue the beam into Aerrow. Aerrow got up, feeling alert, both him and Piper glowing blue. With a cry, Aerrow threw the energy-blast. Blacktalon sprinted clear, a split-second before the lightning-blast hit the spot where he’d been. Eyes widening, Aerrow sprinted forward, prompting Piper to turn her head in surprise. Blacktalon saw him coming. Aerrow yelled. Piper could’ve sworn she glimpsed Blacktalon smirking at one corner of his mouth – only when Aerrow was upon him did Blacktalon raise his energy-guandao defensively, and Aerrow’s lightning-blades connecting sent a bolt from one of the guandao’s blades firing straight into the cottage. In the centisecond the blast blew up a chunk of the cottage’s wall, there was the briefest glimpse of machinery inside and a ball of white light, everyone on the ground and on the <em>Condor</em>’s bridge throwing up an arm reflexively.</p><p>KRASHH-<em>BLOOOM</em>!</p><p>The explosive white plume rocketed over the terra. Within the space of one second, the peak and seemingly everything on it was reduced to a curtain of falling rocks and dust like the explosion of a volcano.</p><hr/><p>Blackness claimed everyone.</p><p>For a long time, the fresh rockfall was still as the grave.</p><p>With a sound, a few smaller rocks began rolling as something shifted. Starling forced the largest boulder off of the space above her, upper-body free as she coughed dirt from her lungs, her body matted with grey dust. Pulling her legs free, she forced herself to stand, swiftly looking around. The terra was virtually gone, leaving only a vast slope of rocks as far as she could see – which wasn’t far. Sickly, pale-green fog was obscuring everything further than fifteen metres from her sight. Despite her hard face, she knew where she was, and it wasn’t particularly good – she was in the Misty Wastes below Ionos’ cloudline.</p><p>The fog swirled and rolled around Starling as she moved, one hand by her mouth as she called out loudly but not-too-loudly.</p><p>“Piper? Radarr! Finn?” She kept her other hand on her crystal-nunchuks as she called and went. “Aerrow?”</p><p>She heard noise, and her eyes flit to its direction. Ten metres away, she saw a crouched silhouette shifting and writhing. She jogged towards it, but she was all too ready to act defensively if it wasn’t someone she knew. As she got closer, the shape materialised, forming Finn lifting a large boulder away from Junko (who was buried up to his shoulders).</p><p>“Guys!” she hissed quietly enough, drawing both their gazes to her, eyes lighting up slightly. Starling immediately began helping Finn lift the rubble off Junko, speeding up the process greatly.</p><hr/><p>Elsewhere amid the pale-green fog and rubble there was little sound other than wind whistling. Abruptly, a monkey-like paw shot from the dirt like something from a zombie mind-worm health-and-safety movie, grasping for air. A second paw followed, the limbs digging until Radarr’s floppy-eared head was freed, and he coughed dust and pain from his lungs. Getting on his feet, Radarr’s large eyes bulged at the green fog that obscured everything in all directions. Radarr’s face darkened seriously, and he didn’t waste any time before scampering along the uneven, sloping rocks, headed in search of his comrades. Twenty metres away on Radarr’s flank, a silhouette scuttled fast in the fog. Radarr halted, ear and nose twitching as he became alert. He turned his head, unable to help the high-pitched frightened whine that came from him. He looked left, right, seeing nothing but rocky ground fading into green fog.</p><p>
  <em>SKREEEEE!</em>
</p><p>That noise was all the warning before the monstrosity with the lamprey-like mouth-piece came charging out of the fog towards him, tendrils whipping about amid the fog.</p><p>Radarr screeched, and scrammed. The beast with a bulbous torso behind its lamprey-head’s long neck slammed clumsily again the sloping rockfall, then it reoriented and charged after Radarr on triple-jointed legs. Metres ahead of the predator, Radarr screamed and push his muscles that much further. As uneven as the destroyed terra’s rockfall was, Radarr couldn’t find any bumps or ridges to hide behind and let the beast pass, and he knew he couldn’t push his muscles forever. Something huge began materialising ahead, which had Radarr chirping without letting up his run. The <em>Condor</em>’s bow and part of one of its engine-arms were above the sea of rubble. But the monster behind Radarr had already closed half the original distance behind him, and it screamed again. It prompted Radarr to give his muscles another push.</p><p>
  <em>Honk! HONK!</em>
</p><p>The ship’s foghorn sounded, lights flashing as it loomed closer through the fog. The light touched the tendril-whipping lamprey-monster, which shrieked in pain and screwed its four beady eyes. It whipped out a tendril, the razor end of which caught Radarr’s hip and sent pain shooting through the screeching ferret-creature. Stork’s face was visible in the <em>Condor</em>’s half-buried windshields as he continued honking. The creature behind Radarr was slowing, mist eating it up as it got further behind, but Radarr wouldn’t give up while he remained out here and exposed to predators. He scampered along the <em>Condor</em>’s roof, the bridge’s rooftop entry hatch opening for him so he could dive inside like a swimmer, whilst green mist enclosed.</p><hr/><p>Amid the swirling, greenish fog, Aerrow coughed out dust as he pushed up. Glancing back at himself, he saw one of his legs was buried up to the knee inside the rockfall. <em>That</em> was problematic. He quickly glanced around for any sign of his friends or anything else, and he found none. He quickly began lifting and shoving boulders and rocks away from the trapped leg-</p><p>A sudden scrape of rock rolling caught his ear like a twig-snap catching a doe’s. Aerrow’s gaze shot up, looking in the direction the noise had come from – too far through the green fog for him to see the point of origin. There was no other sound. Aerrow’s eyebrows lowered – he had a keen enough instinct to know when a sound like that in a place like this was a false alarm or a sign he were being stalked. He began working double-time on getting his leg free. As he worked, his cautious gaze caught on one of his lightning-blades within arm’s reach amid the rocks, and he promptly re-retrieved the weapon. He kept pushing, leaving only a couple more boulders sandwiching his leg.</p><p>“Let me help.” Aerrow’s eyes widened. He barely got a chance to half-turn with his lightning-blade lit, before mauve-pink energy blasted into him.</p><p>The silhouette in the fog lowered his bright-glowing energy-guandao. His features gradually materialised out of the fog as he approached along the rockfall. Aerrow was down, his face shifting unconsciously, hand still gripping one of his lightning-blades.</p><hr/><p>Wind whistled through the thickening green fog. Shifting outlines materialised and rapidly solidified to silhouettes, then to Starling, Finn and Junko sprinting forward. They stopped together eventually, Starling’s hazel-green eyes looking about.</p><p>“You’re not gonna thank me for saving you?” Finn deadpanned towards Junko, the bearded blonde scowling. Junko glanced over at the sharpshooter calmly.</p><p>“Finn, you knew how much my grandmother’s uncle’s twice-removed cousin’s Soul Bauble meant to me,” the wallop said quite neutrally. “I’m glad you helped me back there, but I can’t forgive you until you apologise for what you did.”</p><p>“<em>Urgh</em>, you want an apology?” Finn snapped, before turning his head away. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“You need to <em>mean</em> it,” Junko said a little more sternly.</p><p>“Over here!” Starling suddenly exclaimed, both the men’s heads snapping towards her. Starling was atop a mound in the sloping ground, looking at something poking out that could’ve easily been mistaken for a piece of rebar in a demolitions project. Starling gripped the handle, and pulled the rest of the object out like a sword from the stone – it was a familiar lightning-blade, one of a twin set.</p><p>“Aerrow…” Junko murmured, him and Finn staring in shock. Starling glanced back to meet their gazes.</p><hr/><p>Piper wandered amid the thick, horror-concealing fog, arms folded with hands in either elbow.</p><p>“Aerrow? Finn?” She called. Though her powers meant she could take care of any beasts down here, she kept her voice down in case she drew them near one of her friends without realising. Remembering something, Piper extracted a single bright-orange crystal from her satchel and held it up, the stone suddenly roaring with a burst of flames. It forced the visibility-limiting fog surrounding Piper back a further seventy metres, giving her better visibility of her farther surroundings. The sloping rockfall that remained of the terra seemed to extend practically forever around her, the pebbles making her think of a dormant volcano’s slopes. Piper turned her head, amber eyes looking in several directions – no sign of anyone else around her. She set off in a direction, keeping the crystal held up.</p><p>Piper wandered for what felt like an hour, the fiery crystal beating the fog back as she emerged from it – the crystal also kept most of the beasts down here too wary to come near her. Piper knew by now that she’d gotten lost in the fog and wandered in the wrong direction, as the sloping rocks had since turned to relatively-flat, hard and bumpy ground under her feet, and it made her mentally kick herself. When it seemed quiet and still enough for her to risk making herself vulnerable; Piper sighed, then she closed her eyes, looking within for that two-way magic lifeline which connected her to Aerrow.</p><p>“Aerrow…” she murmured his name, resisting the urge to get frustrated as she seemed to be struggling more than usual to reach him. It was hard to explain, but for some reason it was like there was a haze over her mind stopping her from accessing the Binding – like when one had a day where their mind just wasn’t working and they just couldn’t focus it on what they wanted it to. She suspected it had something to do with the way her ears and head were buzzing with something, which she’d just now noticed happening to her while she’d been wandering. Still, Piper sighed and closed her eyes (firmly, though not tightly) again as she tried to beat the block. She imagined all her frustration at it were a chain tying her to an ocean floor, and that she was undoing the manacle. Then she was weightless, and needed only find a way to gracefully swim around the barrier she visualised that was attached to nothing. With that line of thought, her connection to Aerrow soon felt clearer.</p><p>“<em>Seer’s Gaze</em>…” The spell took effect, linking her visual cortex to Aerrow’s, and his to hers. He was conscious, as instead of being met with the blackness, Piper saw colours in a viewpoint that the magic made look slightly distorted<em>.</em></p><p>
  <em>Piper was looking diagonally downward, at greenish clouds sweeping away along her gaze, which was facing backward to wherever her gaze’s source was moving. Able to control Aerrow’s eyes, Piper flit them with her own will to look around him, though she couldn’t make Aerrow’s head move of her accord. She saw a hint of a tail attached to a metal spine, like that of a kite, with ribs of more metal through it. A flying wear-gear, thought it wasn’t one she recognised.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Probably having felt his eyes shift involuntarily and realising what was going on, Aerrow’s head suddenly started moving, giving Piper a clear view of what was over his shoulder. Atop his back was a plug holding a pale-green crystal (Piper guessed that might be what had made her struggle to get through to him), and he appeared to be bound atop the unfamiliar wing-ride apparatus. At the apparatus’ head, they together saw Blacktalon’s spiky, white hair blowing about the wind, the open sky beyond it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Piper’s vision gave way to white as the spell cut out.</em>
</p><p>“Aerrow!” she exclaimed, horrified. Blacktalon had captured him, alive, and that made knots of dread tie up in her stomach. She had to focus on getting back to the rest of her squadron now, and they had to catch up to Blacktalon if they could. She couldn’t waste time, she had to take a risk to find the others as soon as possible. Piper started tapping into the other one of the two intricately-intertwined magic bonds that lay in the core of her being, ready to transform into a dragon and blow the fog apart-</p><p>
  <em>KZZZT!</em>
</p><p>The moment her consciousness directly touched the Smaug-bond, Piper was blasted along a tunnel of multicoloured light, her vision leaving her body.</p><p>
  <em>Piper was seeing through eyes that were as sharp as her dragon form’s but definitely weren’t hers, piercing the fog. That same buzzing that had been plaguing Piper for the last several minutes and which only now she was beginning to recognise, surrounded her head again; though she could feel and tell it was not in her head but in the head this other viewpoint belonged to. This other gaze was were looking upon Piper herself, her back facing the viewpoint at an angle, her fiery crystal shining like a twinkling star with the heightened draconic vision; the gaze’s owner was producing a growling breath so softly that it was practically silent.</em>
</p><p>Returning to her body, Piper could’ve sworn her heart was suddenly arrhythmic. Did she hear an exhale through the fog from the spying creature, or was it just a breeze taunting her? She was still as the grave, and the fogged world around her seemed to do the same, as if even the elements were silent as hiding prey in fear of the predator she now knew the fog was hiding. Piper didn’t dare breathe, certainly didn’t dare look over her shoulder in the direction where she knew <em>him</em> to be lest that prompt the beast to spring forth upon its prey. She ran.</p><p>Almost immediately, a roar exploded behind her. The hunt was on. Knowing she’d accomplish nothing on foot, Piper tapped into the Smaug-bond and blasted the ground, rocketing herself diagonally upward. She shot above the cloudline, to find herself not in the terra-outcropping but somewhere else as she arced in the open sky. The sky here was turquoise with a sickly-yellow aurora, and valleys of terra-sized jagged mountain-spikes curved upwards above the cloudline like the pointed ribs of some long-dead vast behemoth to form the rib-like valley walls. Guiding her airborne arc, Piper landed fluidly in a crouch on one of the nearest valley- walls. She didn’t stop for breath, she immediately ran. She could barely think clearly, so shocked verging on outright terrified that she immediately pulled on both her magic bonds together. In a bright-blue flash, her body transformed and was flying low, leathery wings working to quickly get her higher.</p><p>Dragon-Piper didn’t dare look back as she gained elevation in the vast valley, didn’t look at where her currently-silent pursuer was watching her distant form flying.</p><p>Piper flew hard and fast through the rib-like valleys, the indigo dragoness hoping to keep ahead of her pursuer. She couldn’t hear him even with her current form’s sharp senses, but the way the buzzing in her head persisted near-furiously constantly told her that he was around, stalking her, hunting. Above the curving valley-wall’s tip on Piper’s flank, a spiky shadow slunk snakelike through the foggy clouding – she snapped her head as her ears picked up something and she felt the air, but the wind wasn’t blowing in the right direction for her to detect any scent. Piper twisted her neck left and right, seeking any escape or solution that could get her the hell out of this. It was too easy for him to hunt and find her in here. She spotted a narrow ravine in the valley’s wall, seemingly leading to another valley. Piper looked back in the direction where she thought she’d last sensed her hunter, then she swerved and dived slightly, increasing her velocity as she shot towards the opening. She heard the distant-sounding roar as she shot into the ravine. Inside, she sucked in air, bright-orange light surging up from her bronze-scaled chest before she breathed a torrent of flame. Her fire seared the close ravine-wall molten-red at first, then her fire blasted over a tight cluster of boulders and caused a small explosion, which Piper angled her serpentine body to avoid as a plume of fire and smoke engulfed the cavern. She thought she heard a small roar. Angling her body as she flew along the opposite ravine-wall, Piper raked her stocky hind-legs’ claws through the rougher rock, triggering a series of small rockfalls and then a lucky blast of boulders and dust which again curtained the ravine behind her. Instead of heading for the approaching mouth that exited the ravine, Piper twisted fluidly and quietly upon a narrow opening on the ravine’s side, just big enough for her dragon body. She held her breath, draconic hearing alert, paying attention to how the buzzing in her head intensified or subsided with her hunter’s nearing or departing presence. Here, not even the slightest breeze could carry her scent and potentially tell him where she was. Several tense seconds that seemed like an hour passed, molten-amber eyes glowing in the shadow where Piper hid.</p><p>She thought she sensed something above on the air – she was proven right when something landed almost <em>directly</em> above her hiding spot with an amount of vibration, disturbing a few pebbles and sending them rolling down the steep ravine-wall directly next to her hiding place. Piper couldn’t see what was above her, but a moment after it had landed, its shadow cut off what little daylight reached her as it audibly scented the air. Some time passed, and Piper heard the other dragon’s rumbling growl above her, a sound of puzzling and slight frustration as it worked its mind.</p><p>A quiet whoosh of air beneath it, as the beast took off from its place practically atop her. Piper didn’t exit her hiding place immediately, keeping all senses open. Five minutes must have passed, before she heard his distant roar – it was very, very far away, at least several dozen leagues. She deemed it safe enough to emerge from her hiding place, opting to double back to the same side of the ravine she’d entered, since it was the opposite direction to where his roar had indicated he’d gone. Still, when she returned to the wider rib-valleys, Piper didn’t dare return to the point she’d entered this place yet – he could have worked his way around to return there by second-guessing that she’d make that move. As she flew quietly through the rib-valleys, not daring to go higher than the tops of the valley-walls and keeping her senses alert; the buzzing in Piper’s head kept rising and falling with each valley she passed through, indicating it was completely up to chance right now whether or not she accidentally flew right into him. She didn’t know for sure if he was still lost searching for her, or if he’d spotted her again from afar and was toying with her again. Piper first wondered if she could quickly slip out of this valley-range and leave him searching for her before he realised she was gone – that had worked on him once before, long ago. Then Piper wondered if perhaps she could try flying above the highest clouds which blanketed the valleys’ skies – she’d almost-certainly be spotted climbing towards the clouds, but if she got above them, she’d be able to see in every direction. <em>Except down</em>, she mentally noted. While thinking, Piper didn’t see the hints of a winged silhouette shaped much like her current form briefly peak through a thinner part of the clouds directly above her.</p><p>Piper decided to keep to the valleys and keep her senses open. She tried contacting Aerrow through the Binding again – hoping desperately that her pursuer wouldn’t sense that through the Smaug-bond. But it was like mentally commanding a dead limb to move. Something was cutting her and Aerrow off from each-other. Piper made a quiet, rumbling grunt with her frustration, brow-ridges darkening. She didn’t see the cruel and elegant silhouette briefly dip its body below the upper-clouds, then return to them. But she sensed the shift on the air, and she paid attention to the level of the buzzing in her head, her alarm increasing-</p><p>
  <em>ROAAAWR!</em>
</p><p>By half-a-second, the bellow preceded bright-orange fire bursting from the heavens behind Piper, the larger and shadowed dragon descending just behind his fiery torrent, huge wings dwarfing hers, scales the colour of blood. Piper screeched, molten eyes bulging – she twisted her body, and with a heavy wingbeat fired twin invisible magic-blasts. The larger dragon abruptly climbed to escape the blasts, which barely missed his long tail. He levelled off, and unleashed another stream of fire, which Piper barely twisted her body in time to avoid. He was too close, she had to dive-!</p><p>Powerful hind-legs slammed into Piper’s back with significant force, knocking the air from her and pushing her in a forced downward-dive. Roaring, Piper lashed out her whip-like tail and managed to dislodge the larger dragon long enough to twist her winged body. She didn’t see the oval-shaped purple crystal, which she’d been experimenting with that day Finn and Junko had come into her lab, slip out of the satchel on her scaly hindquarters to the air.</p><p>The golden-eyed dragon breathed fire aimed directly for her. The flying crystal passed directly over indigo-scaled neck and molten-orange eye in the split-second before flames bathed them. After a second, an orb of light shone through the fiery surge.</p><p>
  <em>KH-SHAWW!</em>
</p><p>A blast of purple light erupted like a spirit of the heavens had just burst into the valley-land, its force mighty enough to throw both dragons in opposite directions. The larger male dragon caught himself on his wings before he could hit the valley floor. The bronze-and-indigo female, from whom the purple-visualised burst of magic trailed like glowing mist, crashed in the valley like some unimaginably-huge behemoth had thrown her by the tail, causing a tremor to crack the ground and showers of rock and earth to tear up in her passing, before her serpentine body slid to a stop. As the last traces of purple light-mist on her hide dissipated, the dragoness’s great mass abruptly shrank in a bluish flash, leaving a tiny human lying on the ground in her place.</p><hr/><p>Teeth bared, Smaug exercised caution as he slunk forward along the barren ground. He knew how much of a cunning, capable <em>pest</em> his prize could be, and he wouldn’t lose <em>another</em> victory to her mitts by getting careless. Piper remained unmoving as the dragon’s bulk approached. His flaring nostrils scented her air while his hard, golden-yellow gaze looked her over, neuron and muscle ready to spring into action the millisecond she moved. She was alive and largely uninjured as far as Smaug could tell. The girl who’d trapped him in stone was now a young woman, wearing new armour and clothing, her features more developed, spiky hair longer and lankier with a small part of it twisted into small twin braids. She was now producing the smell of human genes and hormones, though traces of dragon-scent still clung to her. Smaug had hardly been able to believe it when he’d seen Piper <em>transform</em> into a <em>female great fire-drake</em>, the first female that Smaug had seen in a long time. It had stirred several emotions in him nearly simultaneously – awe, shock, intrigue, fury, disgust. His body had reacted almost as soon as his brain had registered the female scent, but it also now made the great dragon <em>furious</em> to think that this miserable, weak-bodied <em>human</em> had taken everything that belonged to a dragon’s body for herself when she clearly wasn’t worthy of it! Part of him was very <em>nearly</em> tempted to just kill her now. The dragon crept close enough that his huge foreclaw was on one side of Piper, crocodilian head and neck slinking closer. His senses almost-instantly detected the two gold rings she now wore in one ear (he couldn’t exactly say he disapproved of seeing gold linked into his human treasure’s body).</p><p>“<em>My</em>…” Smaug growled in his deep, rich voice, the sound of his words reverberating like the sound of an earthquake. “How you’ve <em>grown</em>.” Piper’s heartbeat altered, and Smaug felt the slight vibration along their bond. Black glee seeped to his black heart as Piper lifted her head, amber-orange eyes slowly blinking. Slowly, she registered the carriage-sized bestial head and looming close above her and the fiery eyes glaring at her. Then the woman yelped in fright and started scooting backwards on her rear like a mouse. Smaug was admittedly slightly taken aback that Piper didn’t even try to put up a fight. She stopped when Smaug slammed a wing-claw to earth hard enough and near enough to make vibrations run into Piper’s bones, but her eyes remained wide and terrified.</p><p>“Hello, <em>princess</em>,” Smaug murmured slowly and darkly, savouring every moment of Piper’s shock and terror. At hearing his voice, Piper yelped and her eyes bulged almost as if shocked.</p><p>“Y- You can talk!” she yelped. That gave Smaug immediate pause, lips closing and molten eyes narrowing. His gaze examined her keenly and he assessed and re-assessed every smell, sense and vital-sign, his brain rapidly working through the information he accumulated. Piper remained on her rear, saucer-wide eyes staring up at Smaug and looking as ready as a rabbit to flee him; while the dragon hummed deeply and arched his neck higher.</p><p>“Do you not remember?” Smaug growled, arching a brow-ridge slightly as his tone sounded both assessing and slightly concerned (not too much concern – that would be poor acting). Another pause before Piper spoke.</p><p>“What… should I be remembering?” she asked, eyebrows shifting in puzzlement. Smaug’s face twisted into a serious scowl as he glared at her anew. He couldn’t smell nor hear any of the telltale signs of a lie. One of the very next things that came into his mind was worry that this could’ve affected his and Piper’s bond somehow, depriving him of the great power which made his human treasure so valuable. He didn’t get more than a few seconds’ quick thinking on that before the sounds of approaching sky transport made him twist his neck to look behind himself, growling.</p><p>“Piper!” a familiar wallop yelled. Four sky-rides were flying forward with an unmistakably-familiar carrier ship behind them, but all slowed to hover. Junko gasped in wide-eyed horror, and the Skimmer-riding, hazel-eyed familiar woman amongst the squadron was also wide-eyed with shock. Smaug was vaguely aware of Piper turning her confused gaze from the Storm Hawks and Interceptor back to him, whilst he kept his dark glare on the self-styled-hero whelps.</p><p>“Who’s Piper…?” Piper slowly murmured, getting to her feet and staring bewildered back at the squadron. “Are… you talking to me?!”</p><p>“What?!” Finn exclaimed aloud, an extra flavouring of shock filling Starling and the Storm Hawks’ faces – Smaug would’ve relished in it, save that he was still concerned by the unexpected turn himself. Piper, glancing back at Smaug, was almost like a hatchling hiding beside its parent, as Smaug’s body largely remained still but his glinting eyes shifted between her and the squadron, cogs and wheels whirring rapidly.</p><p>“Who are you?!” Piper exclaimed, looking between the dragon’s bulk and the Storm Hawks. Smaug subtly curled his lip, eyes shifting as his brain rechecked and verified his decision.</p><p>“<em>THEY</em> <em>ARE OUR ENEMIES</em>!” Smaug bellowed ferociously, spurs flexing and eyes blazing like an inferno at the Storm Hawks, shifting his entire carrier-sized body protectively around Piper. “Take hold! <em>NOW</em>!” Perhaps her memory-loss had affected her personality (Smaug hoped that hadn’t happened) or perhaps it was just hearing him speak like so, but Piper hesitated half-a-second, before she sprinted deep into Smaug’s shadow, latching onto and climbing a stocky hind-leg. In the second that a couple of the stunned Storm Hawks shifted their gazes back to Smaug, he gave them a savage grin, enjoying their bewilderment and the anguish he knew would follow like they were wine. Then he inhaled with light reaching his gullet, and let loose his molten fire. The Storm Hawks immediately scattered to escape the flames, but Smaug sharply and relentlessly twisted his neck in varying directions while still breathing fire, until he and Piper were wrapped in a garden-like wall of it.</p><p>His body largely obscured from sight by flames and smoke, Smaug was beating his wings to lift off while twisting his body – by the time the mortals could’ve made out enough to realise Smaug was taking flight in the opposite direction, his silhouette was already a significant distance ahead of them, flying fast. The Storm Hawks re-converged and passed the flames too late. Starling, Finn, Junko, Stork and Radarr were all gaping in the direction Smaug had gone, eyes wide in horror.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Dun-dun-DUNNN! :)</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Well, that’s the first chapter in this new story. :) Also, to go with this story there’s encyclopaedic facts about Ionos, its inhabitants and terras and tech currently being posted on my DeviantArt account (SciFiLover2) and my Tumblr (Zerm1v0hg) – a new post will be made with each chapter update. ;) I’d also like to add that to promote ‘The Storm Hawk and the Dragon’, there’s now a music video for it on my YouTube account (Ecthox-1mork) if anyone wants to check that out. :)<br/>I’d also like to say, reviews and feedback (both constructive praise on what you liked and think worked, and constructive criticism on what you didn’t like or think didn’t work) are equally appreciated, but no flames please. :)<br/>I’ll hopefully see you in three weeks in Chapter 2. :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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